Byung-Chul Han: “I Practise Philosophy as Art”

In Chalmers’s vision, we would, as Arendt feared, be trapped in a situation wherein we would encounter nothing but ourselves and those things some of us have made. And it would be altogether likely that we would do so while swaths of our common world increasingly became inhospitable to human life. If so, the burden will fall, as it always does, on ... See more

The things of the world have the function of stabilizing human life, and their objectivity lies in the fact that […] men, their ever-changing nature notwithstanding, can retrieve their sameness, that is, their identity, by being related to the same chair and the same table. In other words, against the subjectivity of men stands the objectivity of t... See more

When more and more of the “things” we take up during the course of our day are digitized or virtual realities, which leave few if any traces in the world?

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe once commented that: “When eras are on the decline, all tendencies are subjective; but, on the other hand, when matters are ripening for a new epoch, all tendencies are objective. Each worthy effort turns its force from the inward to the outward world.” 

In his book The Life of Things, the Love of Things, Italian philosopher Remo Bodei traces the role of objects in society over time. “It is evident that the value of the use and exchange of objects today has partially given way to their transformation into simulacra or their exhibition as mere status symbols,” he says. What separates an object from ... See more