God's Zeal : The Battle of the Three Monotheisms Book

This book, written by Peter Sloterdijk, dives into a philosophical analysis of the three monotheisms that have existed in Western Culture: Judaism, Christianity and Islamism. What is interesting about Sloterdijk's analysis is to include the concept ofzeal into the equation. This analysis, then, is similar to a previous book, called Rage and Time, in which he analyzed rage as a form of thymotic disposition and how modernity never solved the problem of rage in its facade of rationality.

The book is divided in eight chapters: 1: The premises, 2: The formations, 3: The battle fronts, 4: The campaigns, 5: The matrix, 6: The pharmaka, 7: The parable of the rings and 8: After-zeal. The book is surprisingly simple to read, even with the mention of some philosophical concepts and religious ideas. It has an Index and endnotes at the end of every chapter. Also, the book is short, so it could be read in one sitting.

First, he dives into some premises and a historic description of the origin of the three religions. He wants to show the similarities and differences they had, and how they wanted for themselves the worship of a single god. In this manner, Sloterdijk shows how God's zeal plays out in particular manner in those three forms; or, in other words, shows us the development of those monotheisms.

The point of showing all of this is to portray the conflict between the monotheisms as one that was full of bloodshed and war. Every iteration of the monotheistic zeal wanted, in some way, to reform the previous one, to purge it from its defects. Later, in Sloterdijk's work, we see him define the ideas preached by these monotheisms as a monarchic ontology. This means that (it doesn't matter if it is real or not) that these monotheisms had a vertical asceticism and that ontologically there was a higher being that was absolute in all of its truths. Meaning: that at the higher level there was no criticism or anything, reality displayed itself as it was.

But the three monotheisms displayed this kind of stuff in different ways. One example Sloterdijk uses is the mono-linguistic interpretation used in Islamism and the poly-linguistic interpretation Christianity used for its evangelization. Islamic interpretation of the ontological monarchism makes it read the koranic texts in an antique form of the arabic language, while Christians interpret that God's word is understandable in any language, displayed in the apostle's ability to evangelize in any language thanks to the Holy Spirit.

In pointing out these differences Sloterdijk tries to explain the development of God's zeal. Somehow, Sloterdijk sees that contemporaneously the three monotheisms have lost force due to the change in thought brought forth in the Enlightenment, and then in its critique.

As a food for thought, there is a slight deviation in The parables of the rings, where Sloterdijk describes a fourth ideology, which was communism interpreted through Marx, put on as an example of atheistic zeal. He used this as an example of a failed form of zeal in the secular realm.

All in all, this short book serves as a new critique of religion. I do not think it is the best critique, but the effort of using the concept zeal and see its historical development in the three monotheisms proved to be interesting. This book proved that Sloterdijk still moves in the coordinates of psychopolitical interpretations, for he still works in themes that go beyond rationality. I still think that the best critique of religion was made by Nietzsche, even if sometimes Sloterdijk downplays it a little by showing that it was somehow narrow in its scope of critique.