/lit/ - Literature

>>12652612
>the illusion of nuance is mostly a consequence of his impressive lingual acrobatics.
and yet he's also a pretty good theorist of acrobatics itself, no? first the miracle; then the acrobatic feat; then the commonplace. this conforms on some deeper level to my feeling about what one strain of philosophy ultimately is: a constructively pedagogical narcissism. i can Have These Feels (and So Can You). not much more than this, you can destroy your brain trying to figure out what is a game and what isn't. together we make the world more interesting. there are certain places we simply cannot get to in any other way.

>the 'immigrants smell' comes directly from an essay of his, i can't recall the name now. olfaction is the most emotionally reactive sense, and maybe there's a lesson for us in that. the idea was that policy should 'follow our nose'. cute, right?
honestly? i think it should. everything else leads to cluster-bombs of ressentiment-driven horseshit that drives us all absolutely fucking crazy with panic and grief. Sloterdijk is based like this.

>you're free to enjoy whosoever you like. i've read most of his stuff, like you, and my reaction has been rather different. he is a clever wordsmith, and erudite; but he's not a very original or even interesting thinker.
i disagree but w/ev. i think he's quite remarkably interesting and singular for this, and he takes as his own master-mentor the quintessential acrobat-narcissist-dancer himself, who has left us all with a very serious problem: how are we supposed to clear a bar set that high?

it is entirely possible that we cannot experience ourselves ultimately *except* as alienated, except as acrobats. we otherwise become guilt-ridden, panic-stricken rage zombies. my definition of a shit acrobat would be someone like Michael Eric Dyson, who cannot help but give the impression of someone who actually thinks he's interesting. he's not. Kanye West is *legitimately* interesting, so fucking interesting he can hardly help from saying and doing things that barely make any sense to us mortals. Nietzsche was so fucking interesting he went insane. Sloterdijk also had something Nietzsche did not have: a long and deep encounter with Eastern nondualism (with Osho, no less, although i don't think that takes any shine from him).

naturally i prefer courtesy and deference to narcissism and worthsmithy; but if you *are* going to be a wordsmith, you are duty-bound to be interesting. Sloterdijk's interesting af. it's all we ever require from our philosophers (or artists of any kind, really). bonus points if some of it rubs off on us too. as when you read or write fiction, and you always wind up writing like the last guy you read (does this not happen to you?) it's the same with philosophy stuff. and bonus points for suggesting a way out of Land's death-machine also. Nightmare Capital does not interest him. i wish i was that cool.