Abstract In his publications since the three-volume Spheres project, Peter Sloterdijk thematizes religion as a now outmoded immunological system. He says it can no longer perform its historical function because humans have lost the protection of a world periphery. The entirety of what was “outside” is now “inside,” and this has happened because: (1) spheres are systems, and as Luhmann shows, systems naturally complexify and expand themselves by becoming self-reflective; and (2), as Nietzsche says, humans are driven by a need to surpass themselves. The loss of world periphery is manifest in the climate crisis, which registers as a general sense that we must “change our lives.” This gives Sloterdijk the chance (or so I argue) to create a new sphere (in the symbolic mode) that can be shared by all humans, a function no so-called world religion can fulfill. This new solidarity would come about when the earth becomes the completing “other” to every self, and individuals act in accordance with the imperative to assure the existence of human life on earth. The last section of the paper contrasts Sloterdijk’s spherology with Latour’s actor–network theory, and his later move into political ecology. I argue that, despite their alliance against “globalism,” Latour and Sloterdijk are working with very different models of space (spheres vs. networks) and have different agendas vis-à-vis the climate crisis. Sloterdijk is trying to build ethical solidarity among humans, while Latour is concerned with a politics (in the Schmittian sense) between both human and nonhuman actors, including Gaia, which is both the space of action (a network of networks) and an actor in its own right. And finally, I take up Sloterdijk’s statement that religions were never anything other than human practices, compared with Latour’s call for acting “religiously,” which means “respecting what others cling to.” I do this by way of showing there are conceptual limitations to the concept of spheres and to Sloterdijk’s project overall.

中文翻译：

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宗教幽灵

摘要 在自三卷本 Spheres 项目以来的出版物中，Peter Sloterdijk 将宗教主题化为一种现已过时的免疫系统。他说，它不再能发挥其历史功能，因为人类已经失去了对世界外围的保护。整个“外部”现在变成了“内部”，这是因为：（1）球体是系统，正如卢曼所展示的，系统通过自我反思而自然地复杂化和扩展自身；(2) 正如尼采所说，人类被超越自我的需要所驱使。世界边缘的丧失体现在气候危机中，这表明我们必须“改变我们的生活”。这让 Sloterdijk 有机会（或者我认为是这样）创造一个新的领域（以象征模式），可以被所有人共享，任何所谓的世界宗教都无法完成的功能。当地球成为每个自我的完整“他者”并且个人按照确保地球上人类生命存在的必要性采取行动时，这种新的团结就会出现。论文的最后一部分将 Sloterdijk 的球形学与 Latour 的行动者网络理论以及他后来进入政治生态学进行了对比。我认为，尽管 Latour 和 Sloterdijk 结盟反对“全球主义”，但他们正在使用截然不同的空间模型（球体与网络），并且针对气候危机有不同的议程。Sloterdijk 试图在人类之间建立道德团结，而 Latour 则关注人类和非人类行为者（包括盖亚）之间的政治（施密特意义上的），这既是行动空间（网络网络），又是行动者本身。最后，我接受了 Sloterdijk 的说法，即宗教从来都不是人类实践之外的任何东西，与拉图尔呼吁“宗教性”行事相比，这意味着“尊重他人所坚持的东西”。我这样做是为了表明球体的概念和 Sloterdijk 的整个项目存在概念上的限制。