Make Art, Not War.

This essay critically examines Peter Sloterdijk’s <italic>Zorn und Zeit. Politisch-psychologischer Versuch</italic> (<italic>Rage and Time. A Psychopolitical Investigation</italic>) and his attempt to rehabilitate a culture of <italic>thymos</italic>, i.e. a culture of self-confidence and self-assertion, whose emotional agent Sloterdijk sees in rage. As an alternative to Achilles’ rage in Homer’s <italic>Iliad</italic>, Sloterdijk’s ancient reference, I will propose Ovid’s <italic>Metamorphoses</italic> as another literary origin of <italic>thymos</italic>. Against this background, I aim to defend the legitimacy of <italic>thymos</italic>, but to give it a different profile than Sloterdijk does, namely that of a creative and culturally productive energy that dismantles the tradition of warlike heroism and is pacifist at its core. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]