In this short book Peter Sloterdijk offers a genealogy of the concept of freedom
from Ancient Greece to the present day. This genealogy is part of a broader the
ory of the large political body, according to which Sloterdijk argues that polit
ical communities arise in response to a form of anxiety or stress. Through a hig
hly original reading of Rousseau's late Reveries of a Solitary Walker, Sloterdij
k shows that, for Rousseau, the modern subject emerges as a subject free of all
stress, unburdened by the cares of the world.
Most of modern philosophy, and
above all German Idealism, is an attempt to reign back Rousseau's useless and an
archical subject and anchor it in the cares of the world, in the task of having
to produce both the world and itself. In the light of this highly original accou
nt, Sloterdijk develops his own distinctive account of freedom, where freedom is
conceptualized as the availability for the improbable. This important text, in
which Sloterdijk develops his account of freedom and the modern subject, will be
of great interest to students and scholars in philosophy and the humanities and
to anyone interested in contemporary philosophy and critical theory.
