The Terrible Children of Modernity

Peter Sloterdijk is professor emeritus of aesthetics and philosophy at the Institute of Design in Karlsruhe. His numerous books include the best-selling Critique of Cynical Reason, You Must Change Your Life, and the Spheres trilogy. Columbia University Press has also published Sloterdijk’s Rage and Time: A Psychopolitical Investigation (2010), The Art of Philosophy: Wisdom as a Practice (2012), and Philosophical Temperaments: From Plato to Foucault (2013).Oliver Berghof is professor of literature and writing studies at California State University, San Marcos.Efraín Kristal is distinguished professor of Spanish and comparative literature at the University of California, Los Angeles.

• Introduction: On Sloterdijk’s Terrible, Antigenealogical Children of Modernity, by Efraín KristalTranslator’s IntroductionPrefatory Remark: On Inheritance, Sin, and Modernity1. The Permanent Flood: On a Witticism by Madame de Pompadour2. Existence in Hiatus, or: The Modern Question—Triangle: De Maistre—Chernyshevsky—Nietzsche3. This Disturbing Surplus of Reality: Anticipatory Remarks on the Process of Civilization After the Rift4. Leçons d’Histoire: Seven Episodes from the History of the Drift Into the Unfathomable: 1793 to 1944/19715. The Super-Id: Of the Stuff That Successions Are Made Of6. The Great ReleaseProspects: In the DeltaIndex

A virtuosic, far-ranging investigation into the costs of denying lineage and heredity by one of Europe's most exciting thinkers and a sober challenge to the idea that our modern mindset frees us from the weight of the past to implement new social and political ideals.