First published in German as: Was geschah im 20. Jahrhundert? Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin, 2016 Includes bibliographical references.
Contents:
The anthropocene -- a stage in the process on the margins of the Earth's history? -- From the domestication of the human being to the civilizing of cultures : answering the question of whether humanity is capable of taming itself -- The ocean experiment : from nautical globalization to a general ecology -- The synchronized world : philosophical aspects of globalization -- What happened in the 20th century? Toward a critique of extremist reason -- The thinker in the haunted castle : on Derrida's interpretation of dreams -- Deep observation : towards a philosophy of the Space Station -- The permanent Renaissance : the Italian novella and news of modernity -- Heidegger's politics : postponing the end of history -- Odysseus the sophist : on the birth of philosophy from the spirit of travel stress -- Almost sacred text : essay on the Constitution -- The other logos, or the reason of cunning : on the intellectual history of the indirect.
Summary:
When we look back from the vantage point of the 21st century and ask ourselves what the previous century was all about, what do we see? Our first inclination is to focus on historical events: the 20th century was the age of two devastating world wars, of totalitarian regimes and terrible atrocities like the Holocaust 'the age of extremes', to use Hobsbawm's famous phrase. But in this new book, the philosopher Peter Sloterdijk argues that we will never understand the 20th century if we focus on events and ideologies. Rather, in his view, the predominant motif of the 20th century is what Badiou called a passion for the real, which manifests itself as the will to actualize the truth directly in the here and now.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.