Saturday, November 19, 2022

Spheres by Peter Sloterdijk - one of the most remarkable books of modern philosophy

I'm reading, slowly, as many books in the recent years, the Opus Vitae of the contemporary German philosopher, Peter Sloterdijk, the three volume Spheres. I will try to report my reading here, but even if I fail, I strongly recommend this great book!

From "Primary Reflections":


"It is the basic neurosis of Western culture to have to dream of a subject that watches, names and owns everything, without letting anything contain, appoint or own it, not even if the discreetest God offered himself as an observer, container and client"

k


From "Heart Operation; Or, On Eucharistic Excess":

Absolutely amazing, and, I must admit, horrifying reference to: Herzmaere, a novella by the poet Konrad of Wurzburg,
(1360):

"One of its daring aspects was the parallel between erotic and Christological language games and the superelevation of sexual desire through the metaphysical idea of union. What takes place here between the lovers as the courtly love of the heart from a distance and the consumption of the heart up dose transposes the act of communion into a dimension of hybridized intersubjectivity; the knight's cooked heart forms a precise equivalent to the host over which the transforming words »hoc est corpus meum« are spoken. Instead of the altar, the kitchen becomes a place of transubstantiation. With the gift of his heart the knight, seconded by his poet, creates a heretical variation of the Eucharist."



k


At the Baltic Coast, November 27th, 2022
Lodz, November 19th, 2022


How Trump can drag us into an even bigger war ....

This is a translation (which I made with help of AI to do it fast) of an extremely thoughtful article by Marcin Wyrwał - Polish war correspo...