Den Himmel zum Sprechen bringen

Detours are the most direct paths to the center. Peter Sloterdijk's new work is evidence of this thesis: Positioned outside of current events, Theopoesie, at first glance, deals with the attempts stored in the library of humanity to make God or the gods speak: either they speak directly themselves or they are indirectly represented in their actions and thoughts by poets. For Sloterdijk, this leads to an unavoidable insight: religions refer in their theopoetic founding documents to more or less elaborate literary techniques, even if the accompanying dogma serves to make this fact forgotten. Religions are literary products, with which authors compete for clients in the narrow market of attention from the educated. A study of the poetic devices that religions employ in their narratives requires a reassessment of religions that moves beyond Karl Marx's theses. Thus, Sloterdijk brings together elements of a critique of literary forms of representation as a critique of both dogmatic and theological documents throughout history—with his astounding erudition—and thus reaches the core of the present, where narratives or facts and alternative facts combat each other.