The Philosophy of Byung-Chul Han (2020)

5/22/2025 at 3:23:38 PM

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).

by TimorousBestie

5/22/2025 at 5:07:06 PM

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.

by -__---____-ZXyw

5/22/2025 at 6:39:04 PM

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.

by TimorousBestie

5/22/2025 at 7:29:30 PM

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.

by -__---____-ZXyw

5/23/2025 at 9:05:01 AM

That you are writing the above is testament to his success, so I don’t know what you mean? You don’t understand why someone so successful is successful?

by richardatlarge

5/23/2025 at 1:56:58 AM

I really enjoyed The Burnout Society, read it about two months ago and plan to read some more.

The "positive power" idea that you can do anything always struck me as funny but I didn't have good words to explain it until I ran into his work. Less disciplinarian punishment, more implicit and internally-driven self-punishment for failing to live up to the "can."

There is a pretty good relevant episode of the podcast Philosophize This (#179).

by molochai

5/22/2025 at 8:13:02 PM

> 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

by lo_zamoyski

5/23/2025 at 3:57:46 PM

If your interested in more of this line of Philosophy or way of thinking I would suggest.

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus by Ludwig Wittgenstein

"The project had a broad goal: to identify the relationship between language and reality, and to define the limits of science."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tractatus_Logico-Philosophicus

by SaltPork

5/23/2025 at 6:33:49 PM

His Philosophical Investigations has arguably been much more influential.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_Investigations

In this context I'd also consider it more relevant, though the Tractatus is an interesting philosophical exercise for sure. If one enjoys the style one should also spend some time with Ethics by Spinoza.

by cess11

5/22/2025 at 10:07:19 PM

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.

by -__---____-ZXyw

5/23/2025 at 2:05:28 AM

Can't help but think of Annie Hall, where someone is talking about Marshall McLuhan waiting in line for a theater, and Woody Allen has a differing opinion and pulls Marshall McLuhan out from behind a sign and he clarifies things.

by m463

5/22/2025 at 5:38:05 PM

This might be a weird question, but OP, are you by any chance The Fire Rises player?

by StefanBatory

5/22/2025 at 5:52:33 PM

No, I've no idea what that is. What's this now? Should I become The Fire Rises player?

by -__---____-ZXyw

5/22/2025 at 7:12:44 PM

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.

by StefanBatory

5/22/2025 at 9:56:44 PM

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...

by -__---____-ZXyw

5/22/2025 at 6:42:50 PM

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

by kouru225

5/22/2025 at 7:31:49 PM

> 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.

by dfadfdsmflkdsmf

5/22/2025 at 8:25:32 PM

I’m familiar enough with the history of philosophy to know that this article, at least, is gobbledygook marketing. Maybe the philosopher isn’t.

by kouru225

5/23/2025 at 4:53:39 AM

I understood it fine. It took a long time to amass the requisite familiarity with a broad spectrum of thinkers and a lot of manual effort to parse and make sense of how they use specific words and turn of phrase to refer to specific things; and not often in a way that is compatible with others' way of speaking.

In short, philosophy by its nature requires a sort of jargon that is similar to technical (i.e. programming) jargon; without that understanding, you will be getting a limited layer of data; references without referents.

by popalchemist

5/22/2025 at 8:05:28 PM

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.

by cess11

5/22/2025 at 10:21:42 PM

Oh thank you, I'd never heard of Rick Roderick, he looks brilliant. Always thrilled to hear different accents in and around academia, too!

by -__---____-ZXyw

5/23/2025 at 9:08:46 AM

RR is awesome, totally agree-

by richardatlarge

5/22/2025 at 8:41:43 PM

This site is great though. I’ll definitely watch through these. Thanks

by kouru225

5/23/2025 at 5:29:45 PM

How much of pessimist philosophy have you actually read? Have you gone back to the German 1800s philosophers? Do you only know Schopenhauer and Mainlander? What about Schelling, Horstmann, Bahnsen, von Hartmann, Zapffe, Cioran? Or to a less pessimist extent but for some reason listed on wiki, Gautama Buddha, or existentialists like Kierkegaard, Camus and Sartre? LOL they have Nietzsche listed as a pessimist. As if.

A solid overview is the book Welzschmerz: Pessimism in German Philosophy

https://archive.org/details/frederick-c.-beiser-weltschmerz-...

I've been reading Zapffe a bit off and on recently which feels the most "accessible" out of the bit I've seen (I've read some Mainlander (but all the translations are very difficult and dense; I think the one I bought on Amazon is actually not as good as the one you can find on reddit, which feels more appropriately philosophically minded, or maybe the heaviness/specificity of the transliteration makes me dig/read harder than the more fluent prose of the one English version on Amazon, published the past couple years). Thacker feels a bit too light to me, but seems to be more a 'popularizer' but also abstract I wouldn't necessarily recommend him.

Ligotti's book on the topic (The Conspiracy Against the Human Race) is bleak but very well written and accessible, it's where I got the start to read more and delve into it as a philosophy.

Personally I don't find Byung-Chul Han that compelling, and maybe it's the translations. I admit I only found a sample chapter, and maybe it just dropped me in the middle where I had no context, but it felt very, as you imply, flowery and abstract.

There's a variety of pessimist writers, and I wouldn't lump them all in with this particular writer, just because you find his work empty.

There's also Anti-Natalist authors who contribute to the pessimist orientation, though I'm not listing them here as I'm not as familiar with their work, but they also have a bit of an older lineage despite it seeming like a newer orientation.

Anyways, if you seriously mean these questions and want to know, asking in a tech forum is probably not the best place, but it can point you to some good starting points, which I hope I have done.

I, personally, am pessimist to my bone, from experience. That doesn't mean people who aren't are invalid. They have a different outlook due to their experiences, and whatever constitutions they have. But I will say reading about pessimism from the heavier thinkers has allowed me to put my finger on things (even if I can't put my tongue to explain the details) in a way that I hadn't seen before, and helped me understand my own interior making.

I wasn't always like this, I was a hopeful, youthful libertarian then socialist, and while hopeful, still, I don't retain it as a likely outcome. Some people are cosmic pessimists, some are more immediate pessimists, some only see it as a personal emotive choice (that's less philosophy than state of mind) but others do see an overarching bleakness in life, despite the beauty all around. Some may even find comfort in pessimism, in known that "one day too, this(they) shall pass".

by wormius

5/22/2025 at 7:55:28 PM

>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

by Barrin92

5/22/2025 at 8:36:10 PM

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

by kouru225