Peter Sloterdijk was born on June 26 1947 to a German mother and a Dutch father. From 1968 to 1974, he studied philosophy, history and German philology in Munich and at the University of Hamburg. In 1971, he wrote his master's thesis entitled Strukturalismus als poetische Hermeneutik. This was followed in 1972-73 by an essay on Michel Foucault's structural theory of history and a study entitled L'économie des jeux de langage. De la critique de la constitution linguistique des objets.

In 1976, Peter Sloterdijk was invited by Pr Klaus Briegleb to speak on literature and the organization of life experience. He obtained his doctorate on the theme Genre theory and genre history of autobiography in the Weimar Republic 1918-1933.

Between 1978 and 1980, he stayed at the ashram of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (later Osho) in Pune, India. Since 1980, Sloterdijk has worked as a freelance writer. In 1983, he published his first philosophical essay, Critique de la raison cynique, one of the best-selling philosophical books of the ^20th century. He is the author of numerous books, including Rules for the Human Park (2000), the Spheres trilogy (Bulles, Écumes and Globes) from 2002 to 2005, Anger and Time (2007), You Must Change Your Life (2011) and Making Heaven Speak - On Theopoetry (2021).

From 2001 to 2015, Sloterdijk succeeded Heinrich Klotz as Rector of Karlsruhe University of Art and Design. Peter Sloterdijk now lives and works in Berlin.

Peter Sloterdijk has been invited to occupy the annual The Invention of Europe through languages and cultures chair at the Collège de France for 2023-2024.