Since the eighteenth century, enlighteners have concerned themselves—as defenders of true morality, whatever that may be—with the morality of those who rule. … The moralism in the bourgeois sense of decency put aristocratically refined immoralism into the position of the politically accused. … But bourgeois thinking all too naively assumes it is possible to subordinate political power to moral concepts. It does not anticipate that one day, when it has itself come to power, it will end up in the same ambivalence. It has not yet realized that it is only a small step from taking moral offense to respectable hypocrisy.


p. 46 - Kritik der zynischen Vernunft [Critique of Cynical Reason] (1983)

Peter Sloterdijk Quotes

Since the eighteenth century, enlighteners have concerned themselves—as defenders of true morality, whatever that may be—with the morality of...

Since the eighteenth century, enlighteners have concerned themselves—as defenders of true morality, whatever that may be—with the morality of...

Since the eighteenth century, enlighteners have concerned themselves—as defenders of true morality, whatever that may be—with the morality of...

Since the eighteenth century, enlighteners have concerned themselves—as defenders of true morality, whatever that may be—with the morality of...