Christmas, understood as the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ, is a time of reflection, rituals and symbolic intensification of life. A time of pause and, if possible, silence, very appropriate to address the thoughts of the Korean philosopher Byung- … Chul HanPrincess of Asturias Prize. In his work, Han defends the necessity of inactivity, non-instrumentalized time and detention in the face of the excess of a society oriented towards performance, permanent utility, constant communication and excess productivity which characterize modern life. In this sense, his thinking reflexively dialogues with what these dates still offer us.
In an age where we lack time to think due to acceleration and hyperactivity, information saturation and excess stimuli, Byung-Chul Han makes it easier for us, because through works such as “The Society of Fatigue”, (Herder) “The Society of Transparency”, (Herder), “Contemplative Life”, (Taurus), “The Agony of Eros”, (Herder), “Infocracy or Non-Things”, (Taurus), among others, offers us a precise analysis to understand what is happening to our society, helping us to refocus our attention on what really matters.
In his praise of inactivity and the contemplative life, Byung-Chul Han argues that the current crisis is due to the collapse of everything that could give meaning and direction to life. Life no longer relies on something resilient to support it. This means that life has never been so fragile, so unstable. Nothing remains, nothing offers lasting support. From this point of view, it is understandable that, under s. XXI, an era marked by overabundance like no other in history, it seems paradoxical that the characteristic evil of our time is depression.
True love involves a detachment from oneself, something outside oneself which gives oneself to the other. However, the other gradually became an object and erotic desire seemed to have faded under overexposure.
To explain it, in The Fatigue Society, Han draws on the sociological studies of the Frenchman Alain Ehrenberg (1950), who argues that depression spreads when society stops imposing external standards and begins to demand that each individual construct himself. It is no longer a question of obeying, but of performing, of being autonomous, efficient and always capable. The depressed subject does not fail because of prohibitions, but because of exhaustion. He is not up to the constant demand of having to become himself.
Lack of social connection
Also regarding the causes of this almost pandemic illness, we must focus on the lack of social connection in a hyper-digitalized life which opens another crisis of communicative action and accentuates loneliness. In communicative action, it is necessary to be questioned by others, to listen and reflect to enrich our own opinion. There needs to be an exchange of ideas to avoid falling into dogmatism. “The disappearance of the other means the end of the discourse.”
On dates of sacred and family love, it is also a good time to rethink the necessary conditions of true love. At a time when, according to “The Agony of Eros”, we are experiencing its erosion, phenomena such as hyperindividualism, narcissism and the loss of otherness become visible. Han also highlights the extent to which pornography has desecrated Eros: “Only love makes the erotic, sex, not exposure, but ritualization, through which the mystery of the other that contemporary exposure transforms into consumable banality is maintained, in nudity itself. »
True love involves a detachment from oneself, an exit from oneself which gives oneself to the other.
All this prevents the romantic experience today and also the erotic experience, as it was in other times. True love involves a detachment from oneself, something outside oneself which gives oneself to the other. But the other has gradually become an object and erotic desire seems to have vanished under overexposure, the society of transparency and the loss of mystery. The French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, in Totality and Infinity (Ediciones Sígueme) in 196, describes erotic desire, not as possession or knowledge, but rather as veiling and revelation, offering itself by veiling and revealing itself without ever ceasing to hide. It is a proximity which preserves the secret and the mystery of the other.
Read Byung-Chul Han on Christmas It is an invitation to stop, to separate momentarily from the noise, the constant productivity and the constant exposure, so typical of our times. It is a very beneficial intellectual exercise in reflection, which helps us to rediscover the meaning of what is essential, in shared time, in strengthening ties and in caring for others. All this in the name of a less accelerated and more contemplative life, capable of restoring love, desire and speech, stripping them of any form of utility or performance.
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