From time immemorial, man has had to organize his "metabolism with nature". For Marx, the most important factor in this was labor. When Prometheus, according to myth, brought fire to earth, another crucial input was added. For hundreds of thousands of years it has been used to cook food and harden tools. In this sense, it can be said that all history means the history of applications of fire.

But where trees once could only be burned once each, the weights of the factors of work and fire shifted with the discovery of underground deposits of coal and oil. Modern humanity, according to Peter Sloterdijk, can be considered a collective of arsonists who set fires to the underground forests and moors. If Prometheus returned to earth today, he would possibly regret his gift; after all, nothing less than ekpyrosis, the downfall of the world in fire, looms. Only a new energetic pacifism can prevent the catastrophe.

Release date: March 13, 2023

Source: Suhrkamp Verlag