[HN Gopher] The Philosophy of Byung-Chul Han (2020)
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The Philosophy of Byung-Chul Han (2020)
Author : -__---____-ZXyw
Score : 48 points
Date : 2025-05-22 13:09 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (newintrigue.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (newintrigue.com)
| TimorousBestie wrote:
| It's strange to me that this guy keeps popping up when he's had
| maybe one actually successful book (_The Burnout Society_) in
| twenty years. I've read _The Disappearance of Rituals_ and
| _Shanzai_ and found them both "shallow, smoothed and filtered."
| There's not a lot of secondary literature building on his work,
| just another book of his popped out every couple years.
|
| > If I've learnt anything from Han it's that we don't need
| perfection, smooth lines and filters, to feel complete. We need
| the authenticity that comes from the negative, the imperfect, the
| hidden and the simply beautiful. Instead of falling in love with
| ourselves, we should be falling in love with others and the
| world, not to see ourselves in them, not to commodify them, not
| to achieve friendship or marriage or love, but to appreciate what
| makes them different and other.
|
| This is a perplexing turn to me because _The Disappearance of
| Rituals_ is, in large part, about how authenticity is The Problem
| With Society and we've all lost our ability to submerge our
| individuality in ritual-bound communities, each one homogenous in
| some respect (the ritual itself, at least).
| -__---____-ZXyw wrote:
| I ordered The Burnout Society after seeing his name on here
| maybe a month or so ago and thinking it looked interesting.
|
| It only arrived recently, and it's very interesting so far.
| Then when subsequently browsing a few essays about his work, I
| came across the one I posted, which I thought was quite
| accessible. Whether it's an accurate or fair overview, I don't
| know, as I'm only a few chapters in to The Burnout Society. So
| there you go, in terms of why this article got posted.
|
| As to the mystery of why the HN people upvote it, we may have
| to live with the not knowing. Generally, I'm not sure if the
| market success of books is a totally reliable indicator of
| whether someone is producing good or useful work or not.
| TimorousBestie wrote:
| To clarify, my metric of success is other philosophers
| engaging with his work, not market profits (those numbers
| aren't public anyways). I've searched around for professional
| articles written about Han's work (beyond asides or mere
| mentions) but they're comparatively few and far between.
| -__---____-ZXyw wrote:
| Ah ok, I had misunderstood then, excuse me. That is not
| unreasonable at all as a metric of success.
|
| When you say professional, you mean philosophical journals,
| or what? My first thought would be the language - people
| aren't writing much response to him in English and German
| too? What is the situation like regarding interplay between
| the worlds of English language and German language
| philosophy?
|
| I can see why his books might be popular with a lay
| audience, in that they're short, and quite manageable in
| terms of the images and sentences.
| StefanBatory wrote:
| This might be a weird question, but OP, are you by any chance The
| Fire Rises player?
| -__---____-ZXyw wrote:
| No, I've no idea what that is. What's this now? Should I become
| The Fire Rises player?
| StefanBatory wrote:
| A mod set in modern times for wargame Hearts of Iron, just a
| bit more crazy. And he's a possible leader there for Germany.
|
| I asked only because I was browsing their subreddit today and
| spotted something related to him, then I opened HN and saw
| your post. It was just a random coincidence, but curiosity
| got me to ask anyway.
| -__---____-ZXyw wrote:
| Hmm, but who is the "him" you're referring to? Still none
| the wiser as to what gave you the idea. I'm missing
| something here, perhaps some jargon eludes me...
| kouru225 wrote:
| Is it just me or does pessimist philosophy just immediately
| scream "I don't actually base my understanding in reality?"
|
| Like I understand that the world is pretty depressing right now,
| but the underlying assumption here is that our actions/beliefs
| inherently have a particular (bad) output, and yet there doesn't
| seem to be much analysis of the mechanics of how our
| actions/beliefs actually manifest as this output, let alone a
| proof of how this output is the only possible output in all
| scenarios (or just the most likely one.) Criticism like this
| relies on the reader to already agree for the outset, which means
| it doesn't really have much value.
|
| >Starting with love, Byung-Chul Han tells us that today we're in
| a crisis of love. This crisis is caused by the growth of
| narcissism and the separation between us and the other. The world
| is increasingly appearing, not as something 'other' to us, but as
| an innumerable number of reflections of ourselves.
|
| But like... what does any of this actually mean on a mechanical
| level? These are all buzzwords that don't have any practical
| meaning.
|
| >Why do we today find what is smooth beautiful? Beyond its
| aesthetic effect, it reflects a general social imperative. It
| embodies today's society of positivity. What is smooth does not
| injure. Nor does it offer any resistance. It is looking for Like.
| The smooth object deletes it's Against. Any form of negativity is
| removed.
|
| What mechanism proves that the abstract concept of "positivity"
| is the problem here rather than, say, political propaganda from a
| dominant power structure that uses a ton of energy/effort
| reinforcing these particular beliefs?
|
| I just don't find this stuff meaningful
| dfadfdsmflkdsmf wrote:
| > But like... what does any of this actually mean on a
| mechanical level? These are all buzzwords that don't have any
| practical meaning.
|
| That's the problem with trying to address philosophy without
| doing the work to understand what the philosopher is responding
| to. This work will take years. These "buzzwords" have meaning
| to those who do.
| kouru225 wrote:
| I'm familiar enough with the history of philosophy to know
| that this article, at least, is gobbledygook marketing. Maybe
| the philosopher isn't.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >Is it just me or does pessimist philosophy just immediately
| scream "I don't actually base my understanding in reality?"
|
| It's just you, for two reasons. One is that Byung-Chul Han
| isn't, and as far as I know does not consider himself, a
| pessimist philosopher. He's a cultural critic, media theorist
| and mostly known for being a critic of neoliberalism.
|
| As far as actual pessimist philosophers, like say Schopenhauer
| go, they generally did not base their outlook on "the world is
| pretty depressing right now" but usually on more fundamental
| metaphysical grounds
| kouru225 wrote:
| Well this is why I feel pretty confident in my analysis then
| because I'm much more knowledgeable about criticism than I am
| about philosophy and all my alarm bells are going off here.
| When I'm reading that blurb about how Koons art affects
| culture I'm sitting here shaking my head knowing that, while
| it's entirely plausible that Koons affected the world that
| way, this statement is still only scratching the surface on
| Koons, the art world, and the history of his impact on the
| art world
| cess11 wrote:
| These lectures, https://rickroderick.org/, are likely to help
| you better understand what this supposed philosopher builds on,
| though I suspect they, unlike Roderick, is a charlatan.
| kouru225 wrote:
| This site is great though. I'll definitely watch through
| these. Thanks
| -__---____-ZXyw wrote:
| Oh thank you, I'd never heard of Rick Roderick, he looks
| brilliant. Always thrilled to hear different accents in and
| around academia, too!
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| > Marshall McLuhan, who warned us that 'the medium is the
| message'. (Technology is not just a tool, embedded within it is a
| message.)
|
| Unless this is an extraordinarily obtuse way of expressing it,
| that's not what McLuhan wrote. He meant that the medium itself
| shapes us. For the "message" of any medium or
| technology is the change of scale or pace or pattern that it
| introduces into human affairs. [...] it is the medium that shapes
| and controls the scale and form of human association and action.
| [...] Indeed, it is only too typical that the "content" of any
| medium blinds us to the character of the medium. It is only today
| that industries have become aware of the various kinds of
| business in which they are engaged. [0]
|
| [0] https://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/mcluhan.mediummessage.pdf
| -__---____-ZXyw wrote:
| Funny, I said something similar at that parenthetical remark. I
| thought to myself - oh, it was only a little remark, no-one
| will catch it! So I'm a bit thrilled, the careful readers are
| still out there.
|
| Absolutely, to what you're saying, and I think it's another of
| those cases where often people know the "meme" (about the
| medium being the message), but then haven't the first idea what
| it means - unfortunately. For example, with smartphones, the
| message is humans as silent consuming spectators and fans -
| sitting silently, staring, swiping, scrolling, mildly stressed
| and agitated and worked up sometimes even but not wholly aware
| of it, maybe mumbling something to whoever is around every now
| and again.
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