[FRA:] Peter Sloterdijk: what is this shit?

[matthew piscioneri]

At the risk of being tarred with the same brush, I *get* Sloterdijk's point 
whilst not necessarily agreeing with him. Perhaps it is useful to read this 
extract as an extended pun on Marx's aphorism 'all that is solid melts into 
air (?)'.

I agree, this is hollow rhetoric:

>>Because all previous natural languages, including theoretical discourse, 
>>were developed for a world of weight and solid substances. They are thus 
>>incapable of expressing the experiences of a world of lightness and 
>>relations.

But, mindful of the pun, i think this is more substantial:

>>Consequently they are not suited to articulate the basic experiences of 
>>the modern and the postmodern, which construct a world based on 
>>mobilization and the easing of burdens.

and this:

>>Therefore they practice criticism in the old style in that they "expose" 
>>the lightness of appearance in the name of the heaviness of the real.

and especially this:

>>the "essential" now dwells in lightness, in the air, in the atmosphere. As 
>>soon as this is understood, the conditions of "criticism" change 
>>dramatically.

at least Sloterdijk wants to continue to make space for criticism. Does he 
articulate the normative basis for such criticism? Or, as Habermas once 
termed it, 'the right of critique'? I have to read the interview.