Wisdom as a Practice by Margolis Karen Sloterdijk Peter

Author:Margolis, Karen, Sloterdijk, Peter [Margolis, Karen, Sloterdijk, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: PHI018000, PHI027000, Philosophy/Movements/Deconstruction, Philosophy/Movements/Phenomenology
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2012-10-01T21:00:00+00:00

* 2 Corinthians 3:6–8 (“For the letter kills but the spirit quickens.”)—Translator’s note.

3

THEORY AND SUSPENDED ANIMATION AND ITS METAMORPHOSES

Following these explanations, I can tackle the task of discussing the creation, or rather the self-formation, of the disinterested person. In my introduction, I noted that from the perspective of the history of ideas, it has appeared as a complex of theories on epistemic suspended animation. The initial theoretical asceticism consists in the philosopher’s efforts to shut off, where possible, the aspects of his own being that obstruct theory. Since the roots of the obstruction of theory go deep down into “empirical” existence as such, the exclusion has to start deep down as well. According to the testimony of the classical philosophers, it is analogous to trying to achieve a state of being dead in one’s lifetime.

In my previous remarks (see p. 42), I recalled Nietzsche’s objection to Socrates’s farewell speech: “We ought to offer a cock to Asclepius.” Now is the time to explain certain aspects of this statement. In fact, Nietzsche had no need to put words into the mouth of his adversary Socrates. The dying savant was quite explicit when explaining to friends around him in the Athenian dungeon why he was calm, even serene, in the face of his imminent death. At this point, the motif of purification comes into play. As we have seen in Husserl’s case, in the thought of the twentieth century this was still assigned an important role, albeit one with different nuances. Talking to his friends, Socrates justified his provocative willingness to die with the following statement: “The one aim of those who practice philosophy in the proper manner is to practice for dying and death. Now if it is true, it would be strange indeed if they were eager for this all their lives and then resent it when what they have wanted and practiced for a long time comes upon them.”1

The expression “being dead” (Totsein) suggests undergoing a welcome purification process:

And does purification not turn out to be … to separate the soul as far as possible from the body and accustom it to gather itself and collect itself out of the body and to dwell by itself as far as it can both now and in the future, freed, as it were, from the bonds of the body? … And that freedom and separation of the soul from the body is called death? … And this release and separation from the body is the preoccupation of the philosophers …

Therefore … it would be ridiculous for a man to train himself in life to live in a state as close to death as possible, and then to resent it when it comes.2

Socrates refers to the disturbing, not to say cognition-obstructing, function of bodily existence as a motivation for the desire for purification: “our hunt for that which has being” could never reach its goal as long as the soul remains burdened by the evil of being trapped in the body. For

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