Peter Sloterdijk 
In the World Interior of Capital 
Towards a Philosophical Theory of Globalization

Displaying the distinctive combination of narration and philosophy
for which he is well known, this new book by Peter Sloterdijk
develops a radically new account of globalization at the beginning
of the twenty-first century. The author takes seriously the
historical and philosophical consequences of the notion of the
earth as a globe, arriving at the thesis that what is praised or
decried as globalization is actually the end phase in a process
that began with the first circumnavigation of the earth D and
that one can already discern elements of a new era beyond
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In the end phase of globalization, the world system completed its
development and, as a capitalist system, came to determine all
conditions of life. Sloterdijk takes the Crystal Palace in London,
the site of the first world exhibition in 1851, as the most
expressive metaphor for this situation. The palace demonstrates the
inevitable exclusivity of globalization as the construction of a
comfort structure D that is, the establishment and expansion
of a world interior whose boundaries are invisible, yet virtually
insurmountable from without, and which is inhabited by one and a
half billion winners of globalization; three times this number are
left standing outside the door.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

First Part On the Emergence of the World System 1

1 Of Grand Narratives 3

2 The Wandering Star 15

3 Return to Earth 21

4 Globe Time, World Picture Time 27

5 Turn from the East, Entrance into the Homogeneous Space 33

6 Jules Verne and Hegel 36

7 Waterworld: On the Change of the Central Element in the Modern Age 40

8 Fortuna, or: The Metaphysics of Chance 47

9 Risk-Taking 50

10 Delusion and Time: On Capitalism and Telepathy 53

11 The Invention of Subjectivity – Primary Disinhibition and Its Advisers 57

12 Irreflexive Energies: The Ontology of the Headstart 66

13 Nautical Ecstasies 77

14 ‚Corporate Identity‘ on the High Seas, Parting of Minds 81

15 The Basic Movement: Money Returns 84

16 Between Justifications and Assurances: On Terran and Maritime Thought 86

17 Expedition and Truth 94

18 The Signs of the Explorers: On Cartography and Imperial Name Magic 98

19 The Pure Outside 109

20 Theory of the Pirate: The White Terror 112

21 The Modern Age and the New Land Syndrome 116

Americanology 1

22 The Five Canopies of Globalization: Aspects of European Space Exportation 120

23 The Poetics of the Ship’s Hold 122

24 Onboard Clerics: The Religious Network 124

25 The Book of Vice-Kings 128

26 The Library of Globalization 131

27 The Translators 134

Second Part The Grand Interior 137

28 Synchronous World 139

29 The Second Ecumene 143

30 The Immunological Transformation: On the Way to Thin-Walled ‚Societies‘ 149

31 Believing and Knowing: In hoc signo (sc. globi) vinces 155

32 Post-History 165

33 The Crystal Palace 169

34 The Dense World and Secondary Disinhibition: Terrorism as the Romanticism of the Pure Attack 177

35 Twilight of the Perpetrators and the Ethics of Responsibility: The Cybernetic Erinyes 187

36 The Capitalist World Interior: Rainer Maria Rilke Almost Meets Adam Smith 193

37 Mutations in the Pampering Space 211

38 Revaluation of All Values: The Principle of Abundance 223

39 The Exception: Anatomy of a Temptation 233

Americanology 2

40 The Uncompressible, or: The Rediscovery of the Extended 249

41 In Praise of Asymmetry 258

42 The Heavenly and the Earthly Left 263

Notes 265

Index 293

Über den Autor

Peter Sloterdijk is Professor of Philosophy and Aesthetics at the Karlsruhe School of Design.