920 pages • Publisher Semiotext(e) • Distributor The MIT Press

Translated by Wieland Hoban

Description

„So the One Orb has imploded — now the foams are alive.“ — from „Foams“

„Foams „completes Peter Sloterdijk’s celebrated „Spheres“ trilogy: his 2,500-page „grand narrative“ retelling of the history of humanity, as related through the anthropological concept of the „Sphere.“ For Sloterdijk, life is a matter of form, and in life, sphere formation and thought are two different labels for the same thing. The trilogy also together offers his corrective answer to Martin Heidegger’s „Being and Time,“ reformulating it into a lengthy meditation of Being and Space — a shifting of the question of „who we are „to a more fundamental question of „where we are.“

In this final volume, Sloterdijk’s „plural spherology“ moves from the historical perspective on humanity of the preceding two volumes to a philosophical theory of our contemporary era, offering a view of life through a multifocal lens. If „Bubbles“ was Sloterdijk’s phenomenology of intimacy, and „Globes“ his phenomenology of globalization, „Foams“ could be described as his phenomenology of spatial plurality: how the bubbles that we form in our duality bind together to form what sociological tradition calls „society.“ „Foams“ is an exploration of capsules, islands, and hothouses that leads to the discovery of the foam city.

The „Spheres“ trilogy ultimately presents a theology without a God — a spatial theology that requires no God, whose death therefore need not be of concern.

As with the two preceding volumes, „Foams“ can be read on its own or in relation to the rest of the trilogy.