Peter Sloterdijk calls for a human right to good news

Journalists tend to dramatise events, accentuating the sense of being under threat, philosopher Peter Sloterdijk writes in the liberal daily Tages-Anzeiger. With reference to the Renaisssance tales in The Decameron, in which the story-telling serves to distract people from the horrors of the plague in Florence, Sloterdijk advocates the right to good news: "This poetry in the times of the plague demands that one say: La vita è bella, even if the catastrophe-monks will hear nothing of it. In one of the darkest hours of human history, in which even the Gospel no longer had the power to lessen the oppressive weight of the bad news, the tales take on a para-evangelical function. They spread the good news that despite everything there is still a savoir vivre in the world that promises a new beginning. ... On the hills above Florence a human right was articulated that is older than any other - the right to news that is better than the state of things, the right to stories that show that the world of intelligence will never be allowed to go to rack and ruin. It is the human right to poetry of beings in need of regeneration. Of those who demand the right to hear news that does not cause one to despair."

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