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4:33

(In »Living religion versus deadly alienation«)

With the advent of the law, there is an explosion of what the German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk calls the anthropotechnics, that is, attempts by the human being to domesticate not only plants and animals, but also to develop techniques to curb and tame herself. From the arrival of the law and onwards, anthropotechnics and its concomitant asceticism dominate human life. In an age obsessed with the successful and wealth-generating domestication of plants and animals in the building of civilisation – made possible by and organised through written language – Platonist totalism functions perfectly as the feudalist metaphysics for the masses. As long as reductionism is considered to be natural and beyond all question, totalism maintains its hold on metaphysics. It is not until Leibniz launches his mobilist monadology in the 17th century that totalism starts being questioned.