The political animal and the ontological being
23
Apr
We imagine from most narratives that Greek politics is
Vessel Hollow
a great model for contemporary society, but Sloterdijk’s correction is as accurate as possible: “The truth about the form of the world imagined by Plato and Aristotle is certainly that city and empire they are figures of the agrarian era” (Sloterdijk, 1999, p. 43).
It is difficult to believe, however, “if Plato defined political knowledge as a pastoral art in reference to featherless bipeds, then it is clear how agro-ontological motives advanced even in the fundamental definition of the essence of power in cities – agriculture and animal husbandry are the reservoirs of contemplation, from which political discourses must draw their plausibility, even if the gaze passes from the garden of the academy to the agora” (pg. 44).
The importance escapes even Sloterdijk, since in modern industrialized European society the “peasant experience” that even Heidegger blames is so, and the “extra-agrarian motives” came “from the workshops of artisans, namely blacksmiths, to advance in the consciousness of the political-philosophical world, and of the ports, a commander, in Greek kybernetes, could become a suggestive figure of power” (page 44).
Coexistence with nature is also resumed in Sloterdijk and his disciple Chul-Han: “it has always been a risk for the city that it uses more than creates man; more than that, it drives him to the last flowerings like reproductions that are too simple; in both the biological and cultural sense, it is more greenhouse than field or garden” (page 45).
Before the development of Chul-Han’s psychopolitics, it can already be found in Sloterdijk: “dominators, politicians and bosses are, according to this logic, above all detonators of functional cruelty – which they obviously do well to create for themselves, under names like reason of state, common good, justice, planning, among others, an acceptable face, if possible sincere” (page 47).
Sloterdijk develops here the true concept of “humanity” “breaks down here into groups that intensify through tensions, and groups that become stagnant in suffering, pain, in the great civilization, acquires a terrible double face; it acts in some as a stimulator, in others as an obstructer; for the minority, lack has an educational effect; for the majority, it acts as a destroyer of souls” (page 48), it is worth clarifying that Sloterdijk is not religious.
To conclude this post, she detects contemporary illness: “the intimate strangeness of master and servant now links them” (page 48) and “the paradox of exclusive inclusivity then takes its toll; people begin to hunt people, kill them in large numbers, exterminate entire hordes and tribes, sell and buy them… “ (page 49).
We have not yet moved far away from Zoom, the exclusivities and non-inclusivities are there.
SLOTERDIJK, Peter. 1999. No mesmo barco: ensaio sobre hiperpolítica (In the same boat: essay on hyperpolitics). Trans. Claudia Cavalcanti. Brazil, São Paulo: Estação Liberdade.
