# Quote — Peter Sloterdijk, Critique of Cynical Reason

> The gesture of exposure characterizes the style of argumentation of ideology critique, from the critique of religion in the eighteenth century to the critique of fascism in the twentieth. Everywhere, one discovers extrarational mechanisms of opinion: interests, passions, fixations, illusions. That helps a bit to mitigate the scandalous contradiction between the postulated unity of truth and the factual plurality of opinions—since it cannot be eliminated. Under these assumptions, a true theory would be one that not only grounds its own theses best, but also knows how to defuse all significant and persistent counterpositions through ideology critique.

- 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: 18
- 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/the-gesture-of-exposure

## 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)