ABSTRACT: This article takes its starting point in Michel Foucault's critical approach to critique and his distinction between critique and criticism. Through an engagement with Foucault's genealogy of the critical attitude, further inscribing Foucault himself in the genealogy, the article expands on the idea of critique as an affirmative enterprise contrary to the art of negative criticism. Building on this Foucauldian framework, it analyzes Peter Sloterdijk's oeuvre as an ongoing criticism of destructive critique and as a continuous practice of affirmative critique. It is argued that the philosophy of Sloterdijk represents one way of administering the heritage of Foucault's critical project. This is done through an analysis of his idea of co-immunity as a response to contemporary crises. Further, it is discussed how Sloterdijk's administration of the critical heritage of Foucault also points to a specific philosophical type and to ways of acting as a public intellectual that speaks the truth and in doing so utilizes the critical attitude on a collective and societal level.
Erik Sporon Fiedler (Sun,) studied this question.