Category: education
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If human beings are not weak, suffering creatures, then…
Consider a commonplace metaphysical assumption about (modern) human beings made by most people today (especially those in the caring profession): In virtue of our being inherently weak and prone to suffering, we human beings yearn to be helped. This argument leads to the corollary that we are all, potentially or actually, victims. Let us reject the claim that…
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A training program in transformation: Implications of Sloterdijk’s You Must Change Your Life
This is the tenth and final set of reflections on Peter Sloterdijk’s You Must Change Your Life: On Anthropotechnics (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013). The first set of reflections can be read here. A summary of Sloterdijk’s principal theses is available here. An overview of my posts (what I term ‘the thrust of his argument’) can be found here. * Let us recall that Sloterdijk has…
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Overcoming dying: On Sloterdijk’s You Must Change Your Life
This is the ninth set of reflections on Peter Sloterdijk’s You Must Change Your Life: On Anthropotechnics (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013). The first set of reflections can be read here. A summary of Stoterdijk’s principal theses is available here. * Here is the thrust of Stoterdijk’s argument: First, reinterpret human beings as training animals and then see what this reinterpretation ‘opens us.’ Second, reclaim a…
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Overcoming sexual desire: On Sloterdijk’s You Must Change Your Life
This is the seventh set of reflections on Peter Sloterdijk’s You Must Change Your Life: On Anthropotechnics (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013). The first set of reflections can be read here. A summary of Sloterdijk’s principal theses is available here. * Sloterdijk has written a book on anthropotechnics. He wants to redescribe human beings as those creatures who train themselves–some doing so explicitly, most implicitly–to…
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Overcoming burden: Peter Sloterdijk’s You Must Change Your Life
This is the sixth set of reflections on Peter Sloterdijk’s You Must Change Your Life: On Anthropotechnics (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013). The first set of reflections can be read here. A summary of Stoterdijk’s principal theses is available here. * Recall that Stoterdijk is singularly focused on how the practicing animal can become more than he is. Having seceded from the buzz and…
Andrew Taggart, Ph.D. 