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An Introduction and Critical Assessment of Peter Sloterdijk’S Concept of Spheres

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An Introduction and Critical Assessment of Peter Sloterdijk’S Concept of Spheres Geogr. Helv., 73, 273–284, 2018 https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-73-273-2018 © Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. supported by The geography of spheres: an introduction and critical assessment of Peter Sloterdijk’s concept of spheres Huib Ernste Department of Human Geography, Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands Correspondence: Huib Ernste ([email protected]) Received: 22 October 2017 – Revised: 30 June 2018 – Accepted: 10 September 2018 – Published: 18 October 2018 Abstract. With his three-volume magnum opus on spheres, Peter Sloterdijk introduces a critical philosophical and cultural view of the spatiality of current society. His spatial metaphors serve as an intriguing source for inspiration for geographers. He describes the topological conditions of society by means of three different forms of spherical conditions of life: bubbles, globes, and foams. To understand, assess, and critique our current society we, according to Sloterdijk, need to replace the arrogant and cynical academic view of Plato and his followers with the more serene composure of the kinetic view of Diogenes. In this contribution, on the one hand we shall elaborate the spatial metaphor Sloterdijk uses. On the other hand we want to scrutinise Sloterdijk’s ideas by drawing some parallels between his ideas and those of other philosophical anthropological thinkers. Finally, we very briefly want to point to a suitable conceptual framework for empirically investigating the spherology of human being in the world. 1 Thinker of space and disputatious philosopher clear-minded science, as if philosophy commands its own territory and outsiders must pay a literacy fee at the door. Peter Sloterdijk has written almost about everything, and In the second instance he unveils some more of Sloterdijk’s in doing so has developed a great number of inspiring as more substantial ideas. Peter Sloterdijk loves to provoke and well as provocative new ideas and new critical perspectives to think the unthinkable and in eloquently doing so, he does on old ideas. You love him or you hate him. He is some- not care for precision, thoroughness, or completeness. As times accused of being a philosophical knock, knock, ginger such it is not surprising that the interviews he gave and public prankster – a thinker who yells something and then quickly conversation he had are summarised in a book with the title hides away. He loves to throw out some grand ideas, out of Selected Exaggerations (2016a). the blue, in a language which is bombastic, swollen and full Even if his work seems to be rather eclectic and fuzzy, of neologisms and with which he amuses but also confuses there is also a basic line of spatial argumentation in his his audience. As Koen Haegens (2011) in a review essay in work, which makes him, especially for geographers, a very De Groene Amsterdammer once wrote, “when you read Slo- interesting and inspiring thinker. In his magnum opus, the terdijk you regularly get the feeling that with his wildest as- trilogy Spheres, the first volume of which was titled Bub- sertions he does not do justice to the facts. But before you bles (2011), the second Globes (2014) and the concluding are able to pin that down, the philosopher is already two, or one Foams (2016b), he develops his main ideas about the three steps further in his argumentation”, and you stay back, spatiality of the human being. It has been attempted several helplessly baffled. Carlin Romano (2012), writing for the The times to summarise this more than 2500-page trilogy, but be- Chronicle of Higher Education, in the first instance describes cause of his style of writing, the many very diverse exam- Peter Sloterdijk as a hip European philosopher, choosing ob- ples, and his ubiquitous use of neologisms, the secondary lit- scurity over clarity using abstract language and neologisms, erature also presupposes a lot and is often difficult to digest the uglier the better, referring en passant to the endlessly in- for less philosophically engrained geographers, and therefore terpretable giants of continental tradition, being prolific even only addresses an in-crowd, who actually did not need it to if he does not have much to say, and rigorously avoiding Published by Copernicus Publications for the Geographisch-Ethnographische Gesellschaft Zürich & Association Suisse de Géographie. 274 H. Ernste: The geography of spheres gain access to the world of Sloterdijk. But as Nigel Thrift space that we share with other human beings and with other already noted, Sloterdijk writes as a philosopher, but to un- objects. In his view we cannot even think of ourselves if not derpin his story, he draws on many empirical cases from a as part of this sphere. This sphere is, however, not clearly de- wide variety of sources (Thrift, 2009, p. 125). So he pretends marcated or bordered, but is a rather diffuse feeling of con- to do more than just philosophy. I will, therefore, critically nectedness. Spheres are affective orderings of living together interpret his work from the social scientific perspective and (Boos, 2013, p. 55). look at it as a hypothetical social theory, based on philosoph- This affectivity is an important element in Sloterdijk’s ical insights, about the relation between human being, and thinking about spheres. Like in all phenomenological ap- space and place. proaches the embodiment of the human being plays a cen- In this contribution I will briefly describe the main points tral role. The lived body (Leib) is the starting point and of Sloterdijk’s Spheres trilogy before I discuss some parallels through embodiment we constitute the world. The lived body and critiques. I will mainly focus on one important, but often unites the physical body (Körper) with the mind, and there- overlooked parallel, namely with the philosophical anthro- fore overcomes the separation of the physical outer world pology of Helmuth Plessner. Peter Sloterdijk claims that his and mental inner world. They are both an integral part of the theory of spheres is an elaboration of the spatiality of Mar- human lifeworld and cannot be segregated from each other. tin Heidegger’s Being and Time (1927). Helmuth Plessner, We observe the world through our bodily senses and through as a contemporary of Martin Heidegger, already developed our bodily movements and observations, we make sense of a spatial theory of human being and thus anticipated many the world, and we experience this sense in the form of a of Sloterdijk’s ideas. But if one compares them, an impor- (spatial) ordering of experiences and meanings around our tant critical difference with Sloterdijk’s conceptualisation of bodily being. We thus create a topology of our lifeworld, spheres is also unveiled, which underscores the topicality of with regions closer by and regions which are at a further dis- Helmuth Plessner’s contribution to the current debate. The tance (Boos, 2013, p. 62). Sloterdijk extends this view by debate on the ontological foundations of current conceptual- not putting the individual subjective embodiment, but the di- isations of the relationship between a human being and space vidual con-subjective embodiment at the centre of his phe- is of course very important, but only indirectly helps geog- nomenology of spheres. So it is not through our individual raphers to do empirical research. We therefore need a more experience of the world, but through a joint clearing, con- detailed conceptual framework with which we could address ceding, and giving space (Einräumen1), a joint creation of a the different aspects of this relationship between a human topological network of relations, that we create our sphere being and space. For this purpose many different conceptual (Sloterdijk, 2012)2. The topological replaces the transcen- frameworks might be useful or could be developed further in dental (Malpas, 2012, p. 78; Günzel, 2007). these respects. In the last part of this contribution, as a very The term “sphere” used by Sloterdijk in this sense is not brief outlook, I will point to the current practice-theoretical thought of in a territorial way, but rather in a relational way. turn as one possible promising conceptual framework for em- Maybe it is even better to compare it with a network of re- pirically investigating the role of spheres in today’s society. lations, which somehow caries us as human beings and in which human beings emerge as one node among others out of the densification of the network. This network, however, 2 The spatiality of Sloterdijk’s spheres has no clear borders. Some relations reach further than oth- ers. Even though the metaphor of a network seems telling in Sloterdijk’s philosophical starting point is Martin Heideg- this respect, Sloterdijk does not prefer the term “network”, ger’s Being and Time (1927), in which Heidegger dealt with because, in his view, this still suggests too much that the hu- the temporality of human existence (Dasein), which Sloter- man being is at the centre of this network. One could also dijk tries to reformulate in a philosophy of Being and Space associate the idea of a sphere with the idea of a rhizome (Noordegraaf-Eelens and Schinkel, 2005). In doing so he of Gilles Deleuze. A rhizome can extend in all directions also tries to criticise the dominant analytical and instrumen- without having a clear core. As such, Sloterdijk’s idea of tal way of looking at the world, in which it is assumed that this being, not as an isolated lonely creature, but as part of we can take the world apart and divide it up in its compo- an intimate sphere, does not really allow the experience of nents and understand the causal relations between them, in 1 such a way that we instrumentally manipulate the world in The Erörterung of Ort (Placing of Place), or Einräumung of Raum (Spacing of Space).
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