CRITIQUE OF CYNICAL REASON: STRAY NOTES

[Ralph Dumain]

12/13/97:

Last night or the night before I pulled out my copy of CRITIQUE OF CYNICAL
REASON.  Last time I read this I got through the first 130 pages or so.
This time I gave my notes a scrute and then browsed through sections of the
remainder of the book.  I'm not sure I'm going to have time and energy to
undertake a reading of all this.  Here are my impressions this time.

The book is all over the place: wide range of subject matter covered, from
real life to literature to philosophy.  Finding certain golden nuggets of
analysis, or even ascertaining the logical argument of the whole book, is
difficult under the circumstances.  Probably there is a certain amount of
diversionary European intellectual preciosity in the book, as well as
insights and examples that are to-the-point.

Sloterdijk's treatment of Marx is pretty shoddy.  I've read dozens of
analyses of the transition of the "Young Marx" to Marxism through THE
GERMAN IDEOLOGY.  This treatment is not convincing.  Sloterdijk tries to
portray Althusser's putative epistemological break as an ongoing schizoid
trait of Marx's: romantic libertarianism on the one side, Machiavellian
strategist of historical realpolitik on the other.  

I wonder if it is possible to consistency sustain the distinction between
cynicism and kynicism.  Early in the book there are some interesting
remarks against the cult of victimology, but I don't see that they would
map into the phenomenon we know as political correctness.  It seems to me
that we have to be cynical or kynical (which one?) about victimology
ideology ....  Overall, of the do-gooder mentality that wants to see only
good in the "victims" and make excuses for their misdeeds.  It seems to be,
that in an unprecedentedly cynical and manipulative age, one has to
out-cynic--or is it out-kynic--the society itself.  In other words, the old
fashioned moral earnestness and idealism has to incorporate the
cynical/kynical realization that there is larceny in men's and esp. women's
souls, and dig beneath surface appearances that would otherwise satisfy
middle-class "progressives."

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4/19/98:

I just checked CRITIQUE OF CYNICAL REASON, and note, there is a short
section on Adorno's negative dialectics as cure for the violence of
positive dialectic.  Sloterdijk doesn't know squat about Marx, evidenced in
some very sloppy scholarship not to mention outright ignorance, but it
would be inevitable that a German thinker would have to include Adorno in
the story of kynicism.

I am admiring Adorno more and more the more I read about him.  He helps me
to clarify my own situation and viewpoint.  I also learn one must be
utterly committed and sincere to properly be cynical enough to outwit
deceit.  Even in an age of cynicism, people are remarkably earnest and
gullible.  In this, they convert their doubts into confirmation of the
existing order.  This is what, with the assistance of Adorno, I seek to
outwit.