Zynismus ist das aufgeklärte falsche Bewußtsein, an dem Aufklärung zugleich erfolgreich und vergeblich gearbeitet hat. Es hat seine Aufklärungselekti… - Peter Sloterdijk

Our lethargic modernity certainly knows how to “think historically,” but it has long doubted that it lives in a meaningful history.

Ideology critique raises a claim that it shares with hermeneutics, namely, the claim to understand an “author” better than he understands himself. What at first sounds arrogant about this claim can be methodologically justified. Others often really do perceive things about me that escape my attention—and conversely. They possess the advantage of distance, which I can profit from only retrospectively through dialogic mirroring. This, of course, would presuppose a functioning dialogue, which is precisely what does not take place in the process of ideology critique. An ideology critique that does not clearly accept its identity as satire can, however, easily be transformed from an instrument in the search for truth into one of dogmatism. All too often, it interferes with the capacity for dialogue instead of opening up new paths for it.

Bourgeois morality tries to maintain an illusion of altruism, whereas in all other areas bourgeois thinking has long since assumed a theoretical as well as an economic egocentrism.