Prof. Peter Sloterdijk

Speaker at the St. Gallen Symposium

Prof. Peter Sloterdijk is a German philosopher, cultural theorist, and writer whose work has deeply influenced contemporary European thought. In 2024, he delivered a widely noted lecture series at the Collège de France in Paris. From 2001 to 2015, he served as Rector and Professor of Philosophy and Aesthetics at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design. His Critique of Cynical Reason became one of the best-selling works of philosophy of the 20th century and established him as a leading public intellectual. His years of independent writing were preceded by a formative period in India at the ashram of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and by his doctoral work at the University of Hamburg in 1976 on autobiographical writing in the Weimar Republic, following earlier studies in philosophy, history, and German literature in Munich and Hamburg.