God's Zeal: The Battle of the Three Monotheisms

This book shows the same ol' analysis of famed philosopher Peter Sloterdijk. If you have read the book "Rage and Time" then by my estimations this is no different. I may say it is even easier to understand. As always, read Sloterdijk's books with a book on history of philosophy by your side (and maybe have some knowledge on religion, this definitely helps).

Despite the subtitle, God's Zeal is not about some war among the monotheisms that hasn't happened. What Sloterdijk rather finds in the monotheisms is a polemogenic potential. Unfortunately the war motif drives a good part of the book as one can tell from the chapter titles. This war motif is based on some ridiculous line by Derrida, which explains its pointlessness. Even Sloterdijk noting that is doesn't apply all that well has to find ways to defend it.If that weren't bad enough, chapter 7 is based on some ring parable by Gotthold Lessing, a parable that does only limited work but at least it gave Sloterdijk inspiration. Still, long after the ring metaphor has ceased serving its purpose, Sloterdijk keeps going on about it. At issue is how are we to judge the monotheisms? Sloterdijk as usual takes a more pragmatic approach. One fascinating idea he finds is that the ring parable leaves open whether a posterior god may judge them. This provoking notion could have been benefited some analysis of Heidegger, but Sloterdijk doesn't do it.Driving the zeal of the monotheists is one of several forms of absolutist exclusive zealous suprematisms that Sloterdijk identifies: personal, apersonal, logical, anthropological--this latter expressed in communism. Suprematism also plagues metaphysics. To find the ground of suprematism, Sloterdijk does a surprisingly deep philosophical analysis. The problem is that the realm of the divine is univocal, univalent while human logic and speech are binary, dualistic, bivalent.Unlike others, Sloterdijk doesn't argue for an elimination of the divine realm altogether. Rather he suggest what is needed is a new logic, a new speech, a new epistemology that allow for multivalency and tolerance. What could aid in this project, aside from general cultural science, is a renaissance, not of the Greek-Roman world but rather of the Egyptian world. Sloterdijk bases this on the work of Jan Assmann. He also hints intriguingly at a process theory of truth. But if humans insist on some mono-ism as they are wont to do Sloterdijk suggests an alternative to monotheism...a monogaiaism based on the realization that we all inhabit this one earth.A book on monotheisms isn't exactly high on my list, even if it is by Sloterdijk. But after reading his brilliant analysis of the book of Genesis in Spheres I: Bubbles, I decided to give it a try. God's Zeal has a disappointing start. It begins with interpretation of transcendence as seven mis-recognitions. Of these only one applies to the rest of the book. But God's Zeal gets better and better. Many of Sloterdijk's ideas here are familiar if you've read him before. Others are new and stunning but he only teases these and doesn't work them out. As always there are plenty of insightful thoughts.