# Quote — Peter Sloterdijk, Critique of Cynical Reason

> Because there are no truths that can be taken possession of without a struggle, and because all knowledge must choose a place in the configuration of hegemonic and oppositional forces, the means of establishing knowledge seem to be almost more important than the knowledge itself. … The demand to universalize the rational draws it into the vortex of politics, pedagogy, and propaganda. With this, enlightenment consciously represses the harsh realism of older precepts of wisdom, for which there was no question that the masses are foolish and that reason is to be found only among the few. Modern elitism has to encode itself democratically.

- Author: [Peter Sloterdijk](https://www.leafyquotes.com/peter-sloterdijk.md)
- Book: [Critique of Cynical Reason](https://www.leafyquotes.com/peter-sloterdijk/critique-of-cynical-reason.md)
- Page: 11
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Peter_Sloterdijk#Critique_of_Cynical_Reason_(1987)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/peter-sloterdijk/critique-of-cynical-reason/because-there-are

## More from this book

> Cynicism is enlightened false consciousness. It is that modernized, unhappy consciousness, on which enlightenment has labored both successfully and in vain. It has learned its lessons in enlightenment, but it has not, and probably was not able to, put them into practice. Well-off and miserable at the same time, this consciousness no longer feels affected by any critique of ideology; its falseness is already reflexively buffered.

p. 5 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/peter-sloterdijk/critique-of-cynical-reason/cynicism-is-enlightened.md)

> Every active deed is etched in the matrix of passivity.

p. 540 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/peter-sloterdijk/critique-of-cynical-reason/every-active-deed.md)

> Since modern thinking no longer entrusts itself with the translation of self-knowledge into worldly knowledge, and of world experience into self-experience, philosophy has had to withdraw from theories of "objective reason" into those of "subjective reason." The ground is thus taken from under the feet of the ancient holistic pathos, and philosophy sinks into the apparent truncatedness and groundlessness of the subjective.

p. 538 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/peter-sloterdijk/critique-of-cynical-reason/since-modern-thinking.md)