Shouldn’t I say something out of love?

Readers of the stream of philosophical blogging that I have produced during the last few years will be familiar with the Korean philosopher Byung-Chul Han. Behind me, I have 11 or 12 of his books—small essays to be more exact—and some of them I have mentioned here, here, and here.

In The Expulsion of the Other (2018), Han continues his analysis of our everyday existence in today’s achievement society. The Other is expulsed due to the terror of the Same.

“In that hell of sameness, humans are nothing but remote-controlled puppets.”

Expanding on this idea, Han returns to the question “Why?”. He claims that if it becomes irrelevant, nothing is understood, then adds, “knowledge is understanding … Insight in an emphatic sense is also transformative.” That philosophical thinking is transformative is well known, but some philosophers—especially phenomenalists—may differ regarding the Why-question, claiming that it leads to unending regress: because, because, because. Instead, for example, Merleau-Ponty would prefer How- and What-questions.

Still, Han’s errand is to illustrate that when everything is reduced to the Same, we become blind or deaf because the strangeness or even the painfulness of the Other is erased. The world turns flat and boring. After all, the subject of seduction is the Other: “the Other as eros.”

Eros is part of thinking, an idea that Han developed in his essay The Agony of Eros; it’s Eros that makes us courageous enough to take a step into the unknown.

Continuing, Han stresses that neoliberalism is not guided by reason; quite on the contrary the freedom of neoliberalism is an advertisement: “… freedom itself is exploited. People willingly exploits themselves under the illusion of realizing themselves.”

“We do it to ourselves,” as Radiohead once sang, “and that’s what really hurts.”

The ideas that Han present here are not new. He has repeated these, at least, since the publication of Müdigkeitsgesellschaft in 2010 (English, The Burnout Society, 2017). But still, like repeating a good joke, small nuances are added.

Han’s style is Hegelian; he operates in dualism. It makes him easy to follow but at times he misses, at least in my opinion, the blurry gap in between. For example, Sameness is bad because it makes us numb whereas the Other opens us for thinking; negativity is good because it challenges and affects us, whereas the terror of positivity makes us empty; love is the answer whereas today’s narcissism and the endless string of selfies only creates emptiness and depression; it’s better to listen than just communicate. Lastly, today’s notion of authenticity is “the self’s neoliberal form of production.”

It’s difficult not to agree. Today people optimize their bodies and souls to become attractive, sellable commodities. Status, prestige, and power are guided by the market, not by love as a political and transformative power.

Still, when Han quotes Deleuze for saying, “Playing the fool has always been a function of philosophy” because the philosopher breaks with the predominant, i.e., the Same, Han tends to be against or opposing the Same from an opposite position. Black or white. However, in my opinion, Deleuze’s philosophy doesn’t create an opposition to a dominant position; rather he is more prepositional, more immanent, placed in the midst of life pointing out new forms of life.

Han, on the other hand, is transcendental. I sense his German roots, Hegel and especially Heidegger, when it comes to truth and origin. He tends to aim at reawakening an “original animal” within. For example, he follows Heidegger’s concept of Eigenlichkeit, the potential for being that suffers from the seductive power of They (Das Man). We are narcissistic in the eyes of the Other because we want to be liked and followed by them, but Han want us to be more true to ourselves regardless what They say and feel. Intuitively I follow him (although I understand the self as a changing process of becoming, not something solid but something else), and similar ideas can be found, for instance, in psychologist Edward Deci’s Why We Do What We Do, where he writes, “…narcissism involves desperately seeking affirmation from others.”

Narcissism is not the result of Eigenlichkeit, but is its antithesis.

Continuing, Han writes that the constant hypercommunication “destroys both you and closeness. Relationships are replaced by connections.”

How do we overcome the terror of positivity, the hell of Sameness? Han suggests that we use listening as a generous invitation for another to speak. “Listening is a bestowal, a giving, a gift. It helps the Other to speak in the first place.” My silence, therefore, expresses a hospitality.

In conclusion, Han tells us what most of us already know, but unfortunately many find it difficult to live up to: Love is the answer. “Only eros is capable of freeing the I from depression, from narcissistic entanglement in itself.”

What Han doesn’t explore sufficiently in this essay is the delicate balance between a healthy self-love (I would call it self-care) and narcissism; that is, today many people are selling love, praying love, even acting lovingly but in a way that seems to be fueled by their desire for status and prestige related to being a loving person. There is a political correctness that has even invaded love, playing with Heidegger’s distinction between Eigenlichkeit and Das Man; authenticity and They.

It could be interesting to relate his ideas to Spinoza, who defines love as the increase of our joy, as well as of our power to act and think, with the recognition of an external cause. His love is social. Thus, instead of striving to be honest towards myself (Eigenlichkeit), maybe I should try to engage with love and care for others. In a way it would make better sense to love my wife than myself because her love makes me more powerful and joyous. And, therefore, I can act with more compassion socially.

I’m not sure that Han would disagree with these preliminary thoughts; still, what he gains in his accessible and stimulating analysis is perhaps what I miss: a more thorough study where the treatment and diagnosis hang together better. For example, yes, we should listen, but what do we do when what we hear is unacceptable, such as misogyny, racism, and extreme nationalism? Shouldn’t I say something out of love?

If love is the answer, then it means that when there is no doubt, there is love. Seen in this light, Han’s book is full of compassion because every time love is absent, we should doubt, imagine, think … how to enhance love.

First published in Metapsychology, Volume 22, Issue 43

October 23, 2018

Life is a shockingly hairy crotch

“The smooth is the signature of the present time,” writes philosopher Byung-Chul Han in Saving beauty. This kind of smoothness, he continues, “connects the sculptures of Jeff Koons, iPhones and Brazilian waxing.”

Han claims that today smoothness is the same as beauty, and this concept embodies today’s society of positivity. We live in a society that offers no resistance; we simply look for others to like us or like what we have posted. Smooth, smoother, smoothest = good, better, best.

Another way of saying this is that a lot of contemporary art works in concert with neoliberal capitalism, instead of resisting or working against it. For instance, Han contends that Koons is, “arguably the most successful living artist at the present is a master of smooth surfaces.” In other words, Koons is playing the capitalistic game. What determines success is the ability to sell your art. Success is here being defined as being known and admired. Koons’ version of art does not require the artist to open an “echo chamber, in which I assure myself of my own existence,” as Han writes. “The alterity or negativity of the other and the alien is eliminated altogether.”

Koons is about as progressive as a Brazilian waxing.

For readers, who are familiar with Han’s work, Saving Beauty unfolds the same arguments against today’s achievement society. Han discusses the transparent, porno, and burnt-out society we have become. What is sad, of course, is that art, apparently, has also been reduced to something kitsch: shiny tulips, balloons, and smoothness.

This book is full of startling, precise statements. For example, he says, “A selfie is precisely such, an empty, expressionless face.” The addiction that our current society seems to have with taking selfies only illustrates an actual emptiness of the ego. It lacks character, and instead, it is smooth and easily likeable.

The core argument in Savage beauty is that today, beautiful equals smooth, clean, and transparent. In contrast, in earlier times, like during the era of Plato, Kant, and Hegel, there was no distinction between beauty and the sublime. Experiencing sublime beauty is not supposed to be pleasurable; rather, it hurts. It makes you fall and stumble. It is similar to falling in love because you can lose yourself and act rather stupid.

“The sight of beauty does not cause pleasure, but shocks,” Han stresses. I must admit that although I attend exhibitions monthly, I rarely am affected. Visiting the Guggenheim in Bilbao earlier this year, I had a chance to experience Koons’ tulips, which was a pleasurable experience. However, they did not affect me like Richard Serra’s The Matter of Time did. With Serra’s work, I found that his huge iron sculptures opened for me an encounter where I interrelated with the work in a way that affected my equilibrium. The viewing his work made me become someone else. That is the beauty of experiencing your own fragility.

“Instead of opposing the sublime to the beautiful, one should return to beauty a sublimity that cannot be subjected to inwardness,” writes Han. Art can shake us, make us see the world differently, and make us perceive our own limitedness and flaws. “The longing for beauty,” Han says, “is ultimately the longing for a different mode of being, for another, altogether non-violent form of life.” Unfortunately, the digital nature of beauty in our current age has removed all negativity or otherness that might have existed. All there is left is something likeable. Yet, following Heidegger, Han suggests that concealment is essential to beauty since “transparency and beauty do not go together.”

This reflects how information cannot be veiled, whereas knowledge can retreat into secrecy. Art is related to the secret story as Roberto Bolaño once said. It conceals something for us, but it often does so in a way that it painful and not pleasurable. Art requires hard work. “Without injury, there is not truth,” Han claims. The smiles and likes of today, “lacks any intensity, any quality of a shock.”

Beauty is located, somewhere “between disaster and depression,” according to Han, “… inherent to beauty is a weakness, a fragility, and a brokenness.” I have experienced that feeling with the artwork created by Serra, not with Koons’ work.

In today’s transparent consumeristic society, art is rarely contemplative. The ideal consumer, Han argues, is a person without character. The ideal worker or citizen in today’s neoliberal and capitalistic society tolerates everything as long as it sells. Nothing is avoided because there might exist a market somewhere for it. “Facebook is a characterless market,” Han writes. Art, when it is made smoother, is characterless as well.

Still, why all the fuss about saving beauty? Why must we fight to save it?

“Beauty promises freedom and reconciliation,” and “truth is freedom,” as Han writes. In other words, a world of smoothness is false; it’s a world of “post-truth.”

For Han, the beautiful is both true and good, it’s almost like the Korean-German philosopher is turning Platonic.

Han is a strong critic of contemporary society. He elegantly hides his own moralism (most of the time). When “beauty frees me from myself,” Han points out, then saving beauty is also a way to rescue the other. It represents an opportunity to save the negative and that which constitutes me as another.

Han ultimately ends up embracing the philosophy of Alain Badiou, especially, his idea that the task of philosophy is to be loyal or faithful towards whatever binds us together. (Han also ended up with Badiou in his essay, The Agony of Eros).

If there is a morale, it is that we have to show fidelity to what takes place. Fidelity is unconditional in that it presupposes commitment. That means, that we once again should try to become capable of matching all parts of life, not just when life is pleasurable and smooth. We must do so even when life is a shockingly hairy crotch or chest. To do so is to save democracy. Or as Han finishes his essay: “The saving of beauty is the saving of that which commits us.”

I recommend the book.

See also my review of Buyng-Chul Han’s In The Swarm.

December 20, 2017

Which dish of noodles is your life worth?

Depression is a narcissistic sickness – Byung-Chul Han, Agonie des Eros

“We no longer live in a disciplinary society controlled by prohibitions or commands, but rather in an achievement-orientated society that is allegedly free,” says philosopher Byung-Chul Han in the documentary film Müdigkeitsgesellschaft–Byung-Chul Han in Seoul/Berlin. He continues, “Yes, we presume ourselves to be free, but in reality we voluntarily and passionately exploit ourselves until we collapse.”

German video artist Isabella Greeser directed this poetic documentary film about Han. The first part reflects upon the film Der Himmel über Berlin, directed by Wim Wenders and written by Peter Handke, perhaps because it’s Byung-Chul Han’s favorite film. Müdigkeitsgesellschaft–Byung-Chul Han in Seoul/Berlin had its world premiere on February 9 at the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (CCCB). A few hundred people attended the show.

Byung-Chul Han is popular not only in Germany, but also in Spain, where five of his books have been lated into Spanish. Han’s thesis is that today’s neoliberalism has made politics psychological, or mental. The logic of neoliberalism has invaded our minds. This is sad, since our mind is all we have. It’s our ability to be present in our life, to think, and to love that is threatened by this invasion. We shrink mentally. More and more is said and done in the same, almost hypnotic and uncritical fashion. All that is strange, secret, or negative—in other words, all that passes through our thoughts—disappears, due to the ongoing repetition of sameness. It seems like all aspects of life suffer from the idea of “best practice,” so popular in business organizations. We lack a critical yet creative approach to overcome this confinement.

In the documentary film, we follow Byung-Chul Han as he wanders the streets of Berlin. He talks about his passion for antiquarian shops, and at least here, time seems to endure. As he passes by the tomb of philosopher Georg W. F. Hegel, he says that he is “the most important philosopher for me.” One quickly realizes that Byung-Chul Han is in no hurry, although he publishes with the speed of Usain Bolt. Still, he doesn’t seem too motivated by performance as such. On the contrary, he stops. He sits down. He reads. He closes his eyes. He pauses. All of these are forms of resistance towards today’s positivity. Luckily, he is not part of what elsewhere he has called “the terror of positivity.”

Philosophy is an intervening time, he notes in Müdigkeitsgesellschaft (Eng. Fatigue Society). Philosophy can be understood as the time of “non-doing,” “a peace time,” as he calls it, in reference to Peter Handke. The concept of “non-doing” also resembles elements of mindfulness in that it stresses that we don’t need to be doing things constantly. Non-doing allows things to unfold at their own pace.

Halfway through the film, Byung-Chul Han flies to Seoul, in South Korea. He was born there in 1959. In this part of the world, the relevance of the philosopher’s thesis and analysis becomes even more evident. People are exhausted. They sleep on the metro, on the busses, behind the cash register. It seems tragicomic. Those who are not sleeping live through the gleaming light of the ever-present cellphones. Do the cellphones work as pacemakers?

In Transparenzgesellschaft (Eng. The Transparency Society), Han notes that we are forced or coerced into participating in ongoing positive communication: declaring, “I like,” over and over, again and again. However, we don’t have to like everything. Social media forces people to communicate more. No pause. Perhaps because updates and news drop down quickly, one needs to keep adding new communications in order to remain visible. A non-visible person is like a non-existent person. It is exhausting.

This reminds me of French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, who once said that “art is not communicative, art is not reflexive. Art, science, philosophy are neither contemplative, neither reflexive, nor communicative. They are creative, that’s all.” However, in order to be creative, one needs to stop, allow oneself to be formed or touched by what is happening as it happens, without judging it according to some predefined ideal. Actually, I think that Han’s philosophy, like most forms of Buddhist meditation, tries to free us from the conventional illusion of having a self. Furthermore, unlike his German collegians at the Frankfurter School, Han is not normative in his critique, but immanent. This makes his approach more creative. Most of his critique is realized as practice. To stay with the vocabulary of Deleuze, then he points out liberating lines of flight that can change our relation to the world, for example, that it is ok not to do anything.

Byung-Chul Han claims in Agonie des Eros (Eng. The Agony of Eros) that we (far too many of us, at least) have become narcissistic. I find it difficult not to agree with him. Like Narcissus, more and more people fall into the water and drown. Or life vanishes while people are Googling their own name. Or they jump off a bridge. South Corea is on the top of the list of countries with the highest suicide rate. In the film Han passes by a bridge in Seoul that is a popular site for suicides. Apparently, no one attempts to understand the depression that leads many to commit suicide. Rather, the sadness is covered up with quotes from poems alongside colorful pictures of delicious noodle dishes. Which dish of noodles is your life worth?

Neoliberal capitalism has gone mad. Freedom has turned itself into a voluntary constraint on performance or achievement. Capitalism is like a train without brakes. We are exhausted; perhaps we need to embrace a tired society where it is okay to do nothing for a while. The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard once wrote to his fiancé Regine Olsen that freedom is the element of love. If we follow Han, then today we are not free. Instead of love and compassion, we have stress, burnout, and depression. I guess it is time to take a break. Pause. Close your eyes. Breathe.

Byung-Chul Han’s voice is both original and needed, and not just in Spanish and German. The documentary is a harmonic introduction to some of his thoughts and also provides some biographical information. Though it doesn’t add anything new regarding his ideas, it can serve as a supplement for those who still can’t find the time to sit down and read one of his short but stimulating books.

For more about Buying-Chul Han, please, see here.

April 23, 2015