cynical reason

is enlightened false consciousness... enlightened because it has acquired knowledge of specific political interests disguised under self-proclaimed universal or disinterested judgments... but false because it characterizes action based on that knowledge as naive, retro, unsophisticated, and apt to make the agent appear ridiculous in the eyes of an authoritative other.

Sloterdijk defines the 'cynical reason' he considers characteristic of the postmodern moment as an 'enlightened false consciousness'' enlightened because it has acquired knowledge of specific political interests disguised under self-proclaimed universal or disinterested judgments... but false because it characterizes action based on that knowledge as naive, retro, unsophisticated, and apt to make the agent appear ridiculous in the eyes of an authoritative Other. In this way cynical reason effectively dissociates the acquisition of social and political knowledge from any possible application to the historical hear and now.'

is the idea that ideology today is not just false consciousness ,but rather a kind of cynicism whereby we know the falsehood of our ideology very well, that is, we are well aware of a particular interest hidden behind an ideological universality, but still we do not renounce it.

But all this is already well known: it is the classic concept of ideology as 'false consciousness', misrecognition of the social reality which is part of this reality itself. Our question is: Does this concept of ideology as a naive consciousness still apply to today's world' Is it still operating today' In the Critique of Cynical Reason, a great bestseller in Germany (Sloterdijk, 1983), Peter Sloterdijk puts forward the thesis that ideology's dominant mode of functioning is cynical, which renders impossible or, more precisely, vain the classic critical-ideological procedure. The cynical subject is quite aware of the distance between the ideological mask and the social reality, but he none the less still insist upon the mask. The formula, as proposed by Sloterdijk, would then be: 'they know very well what they are doing, but still, they are doing it'. Cynical reason is no longer naïve, but is a paradox of an enlightened false consciousness: one knows the falsehood very well, one is well aware of a particular interest hidden behind an ideological universality, but still one does not renounce it.

cynical reason, n.Definitions

cynical reason