# Quote — Peter Sloterdijk, Critique of Cynical Reason

> Philosophy … lost its prestige to the extent that it lost its evident advantage in cleverness to "normal life." In the transition from archaic teachings of wisdom to philosophy based on argument, it itself was engulfed in the twilight of alienation from life. It had to accept that the independent cleverness theories of pragmatics, economics, strategy, and politics proved themselves to be its better, until, with its logical niceties, it became infantile and academic, and stood there as the Utopian idiot with its reminiscences about great ideals. Today philosophy is surrounded on all sides by maliciously clever empiricisms and realistic disciplines that "know better."

- 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: 536
- 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/philosophy-lost-its

## 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)