Rules for the Human Zoo

Introduction

Sloterdijk gave the lecture in July 1999 at a conference on Heidegger and Levinas at Schloss Elmau in Bavaria and published it with Suhrkamp the same year. He reads humanism as a project of taming human beings through reading and asks whether, in the age of genetic technology, “anthropotechnics” might take its place – and who sets the rules for the “human zoo”. Articles in Die Zeit and Der Spiegel accused him of flirting with eugenics; Sloterdijk replied with open letters blaming Habermas for orchestrating the campaign. The “Sloterdijk debate” of autumn 1999 became one of the most widely followed German intellectual controversies of the decade.

Connections

Responds to

• Letter on Humanism1946 · Martin Heidegger

More works by Peter Sloterdijk

• 1983Critique of Cynical Reason