Main features of Sloterdijk’s work on technology

Abstract

In this article, I will focus on the main features of Sloterdijk’s work on the phenomenon and the role of technology. Regarding this context, I will distinguish between a first and a second Sloterdijk, the first sustaining a still quite technophobic position, evident, for instance, in his 1989
work, Eurotaoismus: Zur Kritik der politischen Kinetik, while the second develops a more careful and diversified theory that distinguishes between two forms of technology, allotechnology and homeotechnology. Further, I will relate these forms of technology to Sloterdijk’s spherology, developed since 1998, which provides the anthropological and, as Sloterdijk states, also metaphysical and phenomenological foundations of the phenomenon of technology. Finally, I will discuss two issues that build a kind of counterpoint to the “optimistic” notion of homeotechnology, namely (i) the traumatological aspect of the technological search for immunity and (ii) the role of language in the construction of the immune spheres.