The German star philosopher Peter Sloterdijk explains why there is currently a glut of autocrats – and why he detects a fatigue with democracy.
April 10, 2026, 8:26 p.mApril 10, 2026, 8:26 p.m
In Switzerland, everyone knows the word “sovereign”. This means us, the voting people. But when the people still had no voice, the word “sovereign” was reserved for those who ruled the people: the princes and monarchs.
Autocrats and despots are booming.Image: keystone
Peter Sloterdijk is Jürgen Habermas’s death, the leading German philosopher. But he has always liked to think from the perspective of the Cynic Diogenes, who lived in a barrel and tried a philosophy “from below”. In the beautiful anecdote he tells the almighty Alexander the Great to get out of the sun.
The “rule of the people” is a fiction
In his book “The Prince and His Heirs” he analyzes why more autocrats who do not see the people but themselves as sovereign are coming to power. And why in democracies like the USA a majority of citizens re-elect a man who disdains the constitution and democratic achievements such as the separation of powers.
Some want to be rabble: philosopher Peter Sloterdijk.Image: www.imago-images.de
Is there democracy fatigue? “There is actually reason to speak of a crisis in democracies and a boom in authoritarianism,” writes Sloterdijk. Democracy as “rule of the people” is largely a fiction. Even in it there are the few powerful people who can determine much more than the average person. What primarily appeals to those who are tired of democracy is “the blackmail of governments by coalition partners, interest groups, lobbyists and media agitation”.
A ruler cannot be a good person
That’s why strong men, be they Putin, Trump, Xi Jinping or Erdogan, attract many disappointed Democrats. In the current uncertain world situation, they are at odds with the traditional parties and political elites and are receptive to autocrats who take action, even though it is precisely these autocrats who are responsible for the uncertainty of the world situation.
What characterizes the new princes can already be studied in Machiavelli, whom Sloterdijk quotes extensively in the new book. The Renaissance thinker was convinced that a ruler had to practice not being a good person.
Niccolo Machiavelli is considered an important figure in political philosophy.Image: www.album-online.com
Since a ruler is surrounded by numerous evil rivals, he must quickly learn to be just as evil. Sloterdijk finds another principle in Machiavelli that applies to the new autocrats: success does not depend on how one achieved it. A ruler is allowed to be a big liar and hypocrite.
From Napoleon’s nephew to Trump
Even more exciting than the confrontation with Machiavelli is Sloterdijk’s engagement with a ruler from the second rank. It is Napoleon’s nephew named Louis-Napoléon, who was elected President of the new French Republic in 1848 with a three-quarters majority and who a few years later became Emperor Napoleon III. proclaimed.
Sloterdijk calls him a “spectacle emperor” who inherited the penchant for populism and grand gestures from his famous ancestor. With success: 97 percent of French voters who were eligible to vote gave their vote to this gambler. His idol was Caesar, whom he imitated. He carried out a lot of backstage politics: that of Napoleon III. Cultivated Élysée splendor lives on in Hollywood today.
The poet Victor Hugo mocked in his battle pamphlet “Napoléon le Petit”: This emperor is surrounded by loyal people and prostitutes instead of advisors: “He takes everything, uses everything, defiles everything, dishonors everything.” The striking parallels to Trump are obvious. A backwards orientation can be observed in both. It is already expressed in the slogan “Make America Great Again”.
Both also lack the ability to feel shame. Instead, they embody shamelessness. Sloterdijk has no doubt that this is exactly what makes Trump attractive to some supporters. They would like to be similarly shameless, rowdy and uninhibited. They don’t want to be dignified citizens in a democracy, as intellectuals like to dream of, but are content to be allowed to be rabble again.
Since his epochal masterpiece “Critique of Cynical Reason” from 1983, Peter Sloterdijk has been able to develop “psychopolitically” explosive insights for the present from the history of philosophy and culture. He also succeeds in doing this in a pointed and punchy way in the new book. Afterwards you can better understand why many people currently have a heart for autocrats, even in democracies.
Peter Sloterdijk: The prince and his heirs. About great men in the age of ordinary people. Suhrkamp, 189 pages. (aargauerzeitung.ch)