/lit/ - Literature

>>12213837
>Outside

"It is possible to give a competent contemporary reply to the Gnostically inspired question "where are we if we are in the world,' We are in an outside that carries inner worlds. With the hypothesis of the priorness of the outside in mind, we no longer need to undertake any naive investigations into mankind's position in the cosmos. It is too late to dream ourselves back to a place under celestial domes whose interiors would permit domestic feelings of order. That security in the largest circle has been destroyed for those in the know, along with the old homely, immunizing cosmos itself Whoever still wished to look outwards and upwards would find themselves in a space devoid of humans and remote from the earth, with no relevant boundaries. Even on the smallest material level, complexities have been revealed in which we are the ones who are excluded and remote. Thus an inquiry into our location is more productive than ever, as it examines the place that humans create in order to have some- where they can appear as those who they are. Here, following a venerable tradition, this place bears the name "sphere." The sphere is the interior, disclosed, shared realm inhabited by humans-in so far as they succeed in becoming humans. Because living always means building spheres, both on a 5mall and a large scale, humans are the beings that establish globes and look out into horizons. Living in spheres means creating the dimension in which humans can be contained. Spheres are immune-systemically effective space creations for ecstatic beings that are operated upon by the outside."
-Sloterdijk, Spheres 1, p 28.