Reviews

Sloterdijk's critique belongs as much to the genre of Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy as it does to that of Kant's critiques, for his objective is to see human society through his chosen concept rather than simply to explicate the concept in itself. He defines two aspects of cynicism; one, an ``enlightened false consciousness,'' akin to Marx's alienation, which pervades modern society; the other, a species of critical reason first exemplified by Diogenes. Sloterdijk is clearly indebted to Hegel, Nietzsche, and Horkheimer, but his discursive method will appeal to scholars of literary criticism rather than social science. Brent A. Nelson, Univ. of Arkansas at Little Rock Lib.