Indignation as a political dynamics category

Indignation in Sloterdijk’s writing

Sloterdijk has explicitly developed the concept of indignation in his recent shorter works (2008; 2011a; 2011b; 2013). He also analysed themes related to indignation in his earlier works (1989; 1993). In his enormous project Sphären I-III (1998, 1999, 2004) he thoroughly explores the many different perspectives on how attention is organized and the forces which hold together various forms of social structures and networks. Indignation was described in detail in Zorn und Zeit (2006), where he analysed the role of anger and rage, thymos, as the key to interpreting political and religious dynamics. However, he returns to the subject several times in his work.

What keeps nations, societies and states together?

What, according to Sloterdijk, keeps large political units (nation states, societies) containing numerous individuals together and how? How can a population of individuals be integrated into political super-units? How can individuals be convinced that they are in the same situation as other individuals, bound by history and part of a common survival project (Sloterdijk, 1993)? How is this possible given the expanding individualism which releases the individual from the group and weakens the absolute rule of the group? Sloterdijk attempts to describe the social physics of political super-units, which would explain how and by what means societies hold together. Part of this social physics is a description of the role of stress and its relation to indignation. From this perspective, societies (especially modern ones) are self-stressing [selbst-stressierend] political super-units, systems which continually foster worries and concern. In other words: their representatives direct their attention and on issues which help sustain the concern. Sloterdijk sees the nation or society as a group which sustains and synchronizes shared concerns and stress and consequently citizens can be integrated into coherent communities of shared worries and communal agitation continually. This is partly achieved through the activities of the media: the media produce the impetus that lead to agitation, sentimentality and worry and provide plenty of opportunities for people to become indignant—and in this way social cohesion is brought about.

To sum up: societies consist of individuals. Individuals believe themselves to be more than groups, or societies. A society can integrate individuals into a state of social cohesion. Its representatives, the present holders of power, integrate these individuals with the help of the media, bringing about social cohesion with the help of symbolically produced stress. Stress, agitation, sentimentality, worries and indignation are forces which work against the downfall of groups which can no longer be assembled in the modern era or they can prevent them from disintegrating into introvert individuals or small groups. According to Sloterdijk stress, agitation and indignation are a sound sign that political super-units exist.

Indignation and stress

One of the reasons indignation is elicited in individuals is that various threats are made to the things they consider to be inseparable from their freedom. Sloterdijk does not adopt the traditional classification of negative and positive freedom, nor does he attempt to link traditional and more recent discussions on freedom. His approach is different. He uses the narrative about Lucretia’s suicide to describe the birth of a new organizational form of communal life. According to Sloterdijk, the origins of res publica are to be found in the story told by Titus Livius (Livius, 1979, Book I, 57-60) portrayed as a model of the birth of republican freedom which arose out of collective indignation. In Lucretia’s story the events start with a turmoil of emotions, indignation over the unrestrained behavior of Tarquinius Superbus, son of the last Roman-Etruscan king, and end with the establishment of res publica and republican freedom. Tarquinius Superbus rapes Lucretia, the virtuous wife of Collatinus tarquinius, and she commits suicide rather than bear the humiliation and disgrace. A wave of indignation transforms the passive mood of the inhabitants into one of revolution. Tarquinius Superbus is forced to leave, the Etruscan rule ends and the rule of two consuls is established. They are elected on the basis of their credit, respect and abilities. As there are two of them, they mutually compensate and accommodate one another. Sloterdijk interprets these events which took place in 509 B.C. as “putting the best construed republican machine in the history of humankind into operation” (Sloterdijk, 2011a, p. 49). Res publica refers to the civic management of communal existence arising from the will of the Roman citizens. According to Sloterdijk, the story recorded by Titus Livius is a prime example of the collective indignation which “transforms all those involved into an aggressive stress group, which in turn becomes a political commune” (Sloterdijk, 2015, p. 12). He describes the first archetypal scene and mechanism of the first political emotion as having liberal and republican tendencies; an emotion expressed at the arrogance of power, which has manifested itself countless times throughout European history and leads to the establishment of political freedom.

Sloterdijk’s interpretation is based on Heiner Mühlmann’s Maximal Stress Cooperation (MSC) theory (Mühlmann, 1996). The theory describes the mutual effects of stress and cooperation. Mühlmann discusses eustress cooperation in relation to the origins of cultural groups which are resistant to conflict and that are able to share and develop shared knowledge over generations. The continuity of cultures is guaranteed horizontally by their ability to cooperate under stress and vertically by memo-active procedures or by traditions formed through education. The theory emphasizes that group units, focused on longterm success, must have abilities to manage intrinsic existential crisis through maximal cooperation in times of great tension (e.g. war with rival cultures or other threats). At the same time, they must manifest competency which then enables them to obtain the right consequences from conflicts with other cultures and store them in the cultural memory.

Sloterdijk used the description of events following Lucretia’s suicide to demonstrate the mechanism by which the public is established, originally as an epiphenomenon of civil anger and pride. He shows how public discussion can arise out of disapproval and how the individuals who become the first citizens through indignation refuse to tolerate the villainy of the sovereign. Public life, later called civic society, could begin from a consensus rejecting a sovereign’s villainy, unbearable humiliation and unwritten laws associated with sense of honor and pride. The first citizens were proud and their indignation meant they could employ an effective political emotion: anger.

Two concepts of freedom

One of the reasons why indignation and anger can become the source of a feeling of solidarity is the effort of individuals to regain or defend individual or group freedom. The question is whether it was possible to distinguish between individual and group political freedom in the historical period Sloterdijk’s example is taken from. Sloterdijk pointed out how the term eleuthería (in Antiquity) and the modern term freedom (J.-J. Rousseau) differ. The examples he gave portray a dual-pronged account of the European history of freedom. At the same time they illustrate two basic forms of the lack of freedom Europeans face: political oppression and compulsion of reality (“attack of reality”). In the following paragraphs I will first deal with Sloterdijk’s explanation of the concept of eleuthería and then I will point out the minor inadequacies in it. I will show that the concept of freedom that Sloterdijk attributes to Rousseau can already be found in the work of Ancient authors, who, as I will further show, rejected it due to its potentially destructive consequences. Following the extreme concept of freedom in Rousseau, Sloterdijk searches for the possibilities of immunizing society from the pathological effects of extreme individual freedom.

Eleuthería

The term eleuthería is conventionally translated as “freedom” but this can be misunderstood. For the Greeks living in the 5th century B.C., “freedom” meant being able to live autochthonous lives within a community—under patrioi nomoi, the ways of their fathers. It referred to the privilege not to have to submit to anything other than the customs, morals and institutions that the individual had grown up with and not to be subjected or exposed to the tyranny of an individual. The polis is the sphere in which demos and ethos are combined. This concept of freedom is defined as “the right to retreat within oneself with respect to ethnicity” (Sloterdijk, 2015, p. 19).

We shall examine whether Sloterdijk provided sufficient explanation of the term eleuthería. Sloterdijk appears to ignore a possible genealogical root in his definition of eleuthería. For this reason, he only links the discovery of radical freedom with Rousseau’s Les R veries du promeneur solitaire(Rousseu, 1962). In my opinion, both roots are present in the original meanings of eleuthería, and Sloterdijk probably turned to Antiquity only to contrast (rather than describe) his own explanation of the dialectics of freedom in liberal societies. In other words, Sloterdijk attributes this radical concept of freedom to Rousseau, but it was already present in Ancient Greece.

One of the ways of proving this is to follow both roots and distinguish between “liberty” and “freedom”.

1. eleuthería – meaning liberty, closely connected with the idea of something which grows, develops and then evolves fully. The root of eleutheros is leudh, i.e. to grow, to develop and it is also connected with the root of the German word Leute, meaning a community and its growth.

2. eleuthería – meaning freedom: freedom conditioned by others on the basis of solidarity towards a closed group of people who can be called friends. “Freedom” then means that a person can do things according to his or her own will, without obstruction or restriction. In this sense it is used as part of the phrase “freedom of will”, and in political philosophy it is used to refer to a situation in which citizens live in a free society. This genealogical root also implies a link to the individual: the English word “free” is based on the Indo-European adjective prios, which means both solidarity with oneself and a relationship with oneself and others. Solidarity with a closed or limited group of those who call one another friends is important; it denotes the group’s affective and institutional solidarity. This genealogical root lies at the heart of Sloterdijk’s explanation of the necessary dialectics between solidarity and personal freedom (2011a, 2011b).

The word eleuthería originally had two basic meanings: solidarity with the people (nation) and the idea of growth, leading to the filling in of the form (shape, type) and ending in full blossom. The primary meaning of eleutheros is “to show solidarity with people of your own kind” in contrast to barbaros. In this way Andromache in Illias (6.455), when far from Troy, could lose releutheron emar, i.e. her “days of freedom”. If she lost eleuthería, she could not spend time where she felt at home. C. Romano says that it is possible that

the Greeks felt this home as the primary element in the phrase and “free” only as a consequence. … Eleuthería thus does not at first have a political meaning, but a biological (stock, line, people) or physical (“growth”, and more precisely completed growth, which concludes with the full flourishing of the form… (Romano, 2014, p. 251).

In Plato’s dialogue Theiatétos (2007, 173 a-b), one is free if one flourishes as a man who fully controls the expression of his human form and character; in the Laws (1.635d), one is complete if he is brave and free and if he achieves the fullness of flourishing (in a similar manner to plants). In this sense the term eleuthería was not the opposite of nature (physis) but rather its fulfilment. The conflict between the modern understanding of freedom and the concept of freedom in natural determinism would not have been known to the Greeks. In his Politics (Aristotle, Politics, 3.23. 1325a19) Aristotle speaks of a contemplating man as eleutheros; someone who is free from political obligations and fully actualizes his essence.

In the dialogue Gorgias (491e-492c) eleuthería does not mean unlimited blossoming in harmony with physis. Here Callicles does not understand freedom to be the perfect blossoming of existence in harmony with the law of its essence (with physis) but as growth, development which is not regulated by any law or essence, not physis in the Platonic sense, which always requires a norm or telos and it is its own measure. Mere physis of the man means to have no physis, i.e. to be able to realize even the most extreme options without any opposing restrictions or obstacles. Callicles’ concept of freedom is close to the concept that Sloterdijk identifies in Rousseau. This could indicate a clear line from Callicles to Rousseau and to Sloterdijk’s conclusions. However, Plato rejects Callicles’ concept of freedom because he considers absolute freedom to be false freedom. A different type of limitation is posed by Rousseau in the form of volonté générale. Its purpose is to prevent man from expressing unbounded freedom.

It seems that in principle Sloterdijk does not deviate from the nature to the solution to the problem, which was discussed by Plato in connection with the dialectics of freedom and especially by Aristotle. According to Aristotle the citizen belongs to his home (oikos) as well as to his village (komé) and to his polis. This affiliation is defined by the interdependence of individual freedom (eleuthería), social practice (techné) and the prevailing ethics (éthos) and lawful law (nomos). In thinking about what it means “to live” and “to live well”, Aristotle highlights the inseparable nature of the individual outline of the self (eleuthería) and the possibility of joint existence (techné). Sloterdijk is especially interested in the dialectics of this, which he does not interpret as being naturally interdependent in Modernity. Sloterdijk would have written about liberality as the liking of everything which emancipates man from despotism of any kind, even without digressing to Rousseau, directly using Plato’s and Aristotle’s writing.

Rousseau’s dreams and the extreme concept of freedom

Sloterdijk contrasts Rousseau’s reduced interpretation of the Ancient concept of freedom with the new and radical concept of freedom found in Rousseau’s “Fifth Walk” (Rousseau, 1962). Here Rousseau describes his stay on Ile de St-Pierre in Lac de Bienne, Switzerland. He describes a short contemplation, in which he dreamed of a boat in which he used to go across the lake in. Rousseau claimed that this dream was much dearer to him than anything in his life which had brought him joy before. The excerpt is as follows:

What is the nature of one’s enjoyment in such a situation? Nothing external to oneself, nothing except oneself and one’s own existence; so long as this state lasts, one suffices to oneself, like God. The sentiment of existence, stripped of all other affection, is in itself a precious sentiment of contentment and of peace, which suffices alone to render its existence dear and sweet to whoever knows how to remove from himself all the sensual and terrestrial impressions which come unceasingly to distract us, and to trouble the sweetness here below (Rousseau, 1962, pp. 92-93).

Sloterdijk considers this excerpt to be significant to the modern understanding of freedom, because it is an illustration of the freedom of a person dreaming while awake. Rousseau presents the individual as the new subject of freedom

the fact that probably for the first time on European soil, an experience of freedom was expressed in which the subject of freedom refers exclusively to his felt existence, beyond all achievements and obligations, and also beyond possible ambitions to be recognized by the others (Sloterdijk, 2015, p. 21).

According to Sloterdijk’s comments, Rousseau unintentionally ascribes a new meaning to the term freedom when describing this happy awareness. This meaning contradicts everything which has been associated with the term in the history of philosophy so far: a) freedom as the right not to be harassed by the rule of arbitrariness, b) freedom as true membership of the polis, c) freedom as individual autarky, d) freedom as liberation from the cult, e) freedom as the privilege of a master, etc. Sloterdijk claims that behind this description hides the definition of freedom as “a state of exquisite unusability in which the individual is entirely with themselves but mostly detached from their everyday identity” (Sloterdijk, 2015, p. 27). In this view the free individual is distanced from society and the self that is interwoven in social relations. The individual is not drawn by collective concerns and does not consider himself to be part of them. He is carefree and in his heart (in relation to the past, present and future) he is not preoccupied with anything. The individual does not manifest anything through this freedom; there is nothing for him to say; he has no opinion; he does not comment or say anything; he has no project—nothing can organize his attention. At that particular moment he is not a cognizing subject, the subject of will; he is not acting as a real entity, and he is neither an artistic nor a political subject. At that moment his freedom is only a state of ecstatic uselessness towards everything, it is pure existence. In this way the free man “discovers they is the most useless person in the world—and has no objections whatsoever” (Sloterdijk, 2015, p. 28).

Political oppression and the attack of reality

Sloterdijk’s historical exploration of the problem of freedom identifies two basic types of oppression which create systems of stress relations: 1) political oppression, 2) anonymous despotism of the real. Political oppression creates a system of stress which is only successful as long as the oppressed choose to avoid stress (they are obedient, resigned, ready to serve, can avoid stress or compensate for it successfully) rather than revolting or partaking in a revolution. Political oppression can lead to anti-tyrannical revolt, which is a manifestation of MSC through uncontrollable indignation. The critical moment for revolt is the discovery that avoiding oppression related stress costs us more than rebelling against the cause of stress. Sloterdijk illustrates the limits of bearable stress by stating “better dead than enslaved any longer” (Sloterdijk, 2015, p. 30).

Anonymous despotism is, according to Sloterdijk, any state in which people’s lives are burdened with reality and other things. Is it possible to resist despotism or tyranny of the real and political oppression? Sloterdijk believes that partial revolts against various kinds of stress in life have already happened and that we know them as the Industrial Revolution, the Enlightenment, modernization, affluence, technologies, and democracy. According to Sloterdijk, these terms denote parts of an ontological revolution as they address aspects of an epochal revolt against the oppressive and stressful character of reality. A person who wants to be modern works to turn reality up-to-now into reality then—easier than converting the more difficult and unbearable. Sloterdijk interprets modernism as an “ontological movement of freedom, based on the fundamental need to break free from the yoke of circumstances” (Sloterdijk, 2015, p. 33). He uses his thinking on stress related to despotism of the real to describe what he means by modernism: “The secret of modernity lies in its ability to recruit people of any background and every confession for the greatest of all campaigns: the campaign to achieve progressive relief from that anonymous stress resulting from oppression by the real” (Sloterdijk, 2015, p. 33).

Sloterdijk considers Rousseau’s purposeless dreaming to be an extreme form of individual freedom and a radical form of flight from the despotism of the real. Rousseau’s dreaming represents the maximum limit of the potential escape from the pressures of reality and of freeing oneself from stress, worries and reality. The problem is that reality does not exist for a subject who is not burdened with memories, the immediate reality, the future, or worries. He can achieve freedom at its utmost—but only at the cost of reality disappearing from his field of vision and his mind. He becomes totally antisocial and in this situation of extreme freedom reality response appears soon. Reality is now an “objectivity which returns after the successful retreat to pure subjectivity” (Sloterdijk, 2015, p. 33). It is something the temporarily absent person is quickly reminded of.

What is reality and how to bring people back to it

It has been stated above that Sloterdijk sees societies as self-stressing political super-units, as systems which perpetuate worries and concern; systems which organize attention on issues, thereby sustaining agitation. If the society is a group which sustains and synchronizes shared agitation and stress and its citizens are consequently integrated into coherent societies of worries and agitation continually, then the realization that reality can be forgotten can become a menace and mass escapism of this type can be a social disaster. From this perspective, the definition of reality presented by Sloterdijk is understandable:

Reality is in fact a construct in modernity, but precisely not a construct of the subject so much as a construct of the defenders of objectivity that serves no other purpose than to prevent the escape of the subject from the shared stress reality (Sloterdijk, 2015, p. 42).

If reality can be forgotten, one can give reasons for why it should not be forgotten. In other words: there will be attempts to organize attention which will avert the threat that the subject might evade the shared stress reality. Sloterdijk uses panic arising from radiating subjectivity to illustrate an event described by Rousseau in his “Fifth Walk” called lapidation (the penalty of stoning; Rousseau, 1962, p. 84). His house in Môtiers was attacked by villagers who probably disapproved of Rousseau’s free thinking and his eccentric Armenian kaftan. After this Rousseau retired to the Ile de St-Pierre. Sloterdijk calls the people who had pelted Rousseau’s house with stones anti-subjective reaction agents who had been provoked by the eccentricity of an individual. Rousseau is free not because he can do what he wants but because he does not have to do what he does not want to do. Sloterdijk uses the event of lapidation to illustrate the mechanism through which the defense of reality is construed and which prevents the subject from avoiding the shared stress reality.

The dialectics of reality and the individuals avoiding it can be used to illustrate how the sphere of freedom, towards which political attempts to organize attention are aimed, is gradually extended. Rousseau’s is an extreme model of the radiation of pure subjectivity. Other individuals in modern societies do not have to manifest extreme forms of avoidance— sometimes going on vacation is enough or, as Sloterdijk says, even a short-term alcohol induced suppression of reality, variants of daydreaming or other forms of active inaction. It seems that the question facing modern societies and politics (as the organization of attention) relates to the dialectics between the amount of antisocial subjective dreaming and the requirements for public life. The question is: How can personal interests and escapist tendencies be combined with group interests, the construction of reality, and the common will? How can the system for organizing attention be adjusted, balanced and compensated for so that it is possible to speak about the freedom of individuals? According to Sloterdijk one way to “re-implant reality as the source of stress into the laid-back subject” (Sloterdijk, 2015, p. 46) should be found. To do so it is necessary to interpret freedom as the opposite of carefreeness; otherwise the receding subject cannot be moved back into the sphere of objective concerns and collective issues.

The situation facing a receding or rebellious subject can be explained with the help of a literary illustration. It shows how the subject who is supposed to show indignation escapes permanently from the sphere of objective worries and collective issues. Jaroslav Hašek’s famous novel Osudy dobrého vojáka Švejka za světové války (The Fateful Adventures of the Good Soldier Švejk during the World War) starts with the exclamation: “And so they’ve killed our Ferdinand.” (Hašek, 2000, p. 7). The monarch’s death, however, is not the source of Švejk’s indignation. At the beginning, Švejk has difficulty identifying the right Ferdinand because, unlike the charlady Mrs Müller, he does not associate the name Ferdinand directly with the monarch and subsequently he leaves for the restaurant “U Kalicha”. Švejk feels no indignation; he is reluctant to get involved in the social stress network; however, he cannot escape the clutches of war. Švejk is the kind who will escape any attempts to organize attention and visibility relations. At the same time, he shows that it is possible to gain immunity against attempts to re-implant reality as the source of stress in the subject. Švejk is an agent stoically escaping the despotism of the collective construction of stress, but at the same time he is not antisocial. He thinks differently, has a sense of the things which are possible and sympathizes with everything which emancipates men from despotism of any kind. He retains his freedom and cooperates at his own discretion.

Conclusion

As we have seen, extreme personal freedom is antisocial and not a functional way of life in which a person is necessarily involved in social networks and social institutions. With the help of attention organization and visibility relations (the construction of reality) society is able to deter extreme avoidance by its citizens. This resistance can have negative or even pathological features in politics: various forms of individual restrictions on freedom or attempts to tame the individual by influencing his libido. According to Sloterdijk the pathology of resistance can also lie in the fact that resistance tries to disconnect citizens from participation in res publica through expertocracy and the entertainment culture, depoliticization, various rewards for maintaining the peace, suppression of unwelcome dissidents and bearers of unwelcome opinions, unwillingness to give the floor to the others, etc. In my opinion an ingenious variant is the attempt to portray the disconnection of citizens (with the help of attention organization and organization of what should be seen) as active involvement.

Nevertheless, there remains the burdensome citizen who refuses to become a mere indulgent political omnivore; he is capable of indignation, can manifest his dissidence, is proud and can be informed, can express whatever he wants and what he is afraid of and can complain about his needs and interests being misrepresented. A thymotic citizen who is capable of indignation is not content with passive legitimacy being given to governments in representative democracies and is often contemptuous of the way politics is performed. That is why Sloterdijk says that: “In the digital citizenship era no government is safe against their citizens’ indignation. If the anger is successful, a new architecture of political participation occurs” (Sloterdijk, 2011a, p. 58). Therefore, the key issues in politics, interpreted as attempts to organize attention, are dialectical exchanges between personal freedom and a society organized along liberal principles; that is why I made an attempt to direct attention to the link between indignation and politics and to make them visible using the thinking of Peter Sloterdijk.