Thought-tinkering – the Korean German philosopher Byung-Chul Han | Aeon Essays
Han believes the German Romantic tradition to be the bearer of a similar albeit distinct conception of universal friendliness, in which all human beings may become ‘ fellow citizens in a republic of the living ’. It is a conception that mediates between the East’s indifferent friendliness and the West’s passionate friendship, between the universali... See more
Oliver Balch • Thought-tinkering – the Korean German philosopher Byung-Chul Han | Aeon Essays
Han’s Core Message
Capitalism thrives not by forcing us to conform, but by getting us to identify with it — so deeply that we can’t imagine life outside of it.
We’re no longer exploited by others, but exploit ourselves in the name of success, happiness, visibility, and relevance.
This makes revolution feel impossible, because the battlefield is internal.
Transcendence and transgression are twin dimensions of the negative: both involve going above and beyond the already known. Just as they are being extirpated from the erotic, so they are also losing their place in the aesthetic. Contemporary art, Han argues in Saving Beauty (2015), has become the expressive organ of a ‘ society of positivity ’, as ... See more
Oliver Balch • Thought-tinkering – the Korean German philosopher Byung-Chul Han | Aeon Essays
Under digital capitalism, the Other vanishes, and each of us becomes a flattening “I am seen so I am” construct. Surfaces (think: Jeff Koons, iPhones) get glossy, stripping away traces of labor, resistance, or nuance—what Han calls the “smooth aesthetic.”
he fundamental basis of this erosion of meaningful experience, argues Han, is felt at the level of temporality. The accelerated time of digital capitalism effectively abolishes the practice of ‘contemplative lingering’. Life is felt not as a temporal continuum but as a discontinuous pile-up of sensations crowding in on each other. One of the more e... See more
Oliver Balch • Thought-tinkering – the Korean German philosopher Byung-Chul Han | Aeon Essays
Digital life speeds us up so much that we can no longer sit with anything — not art, not people, not even ourselves.
Without slowness and uncertainty, trust dies. Love dies. Everything becomes temporary and shallow, because there’s no time to build meaning.
love is a leap into the unknown. But when everything is designed to be convenient, optimised, and “safe,” that kind of love becomes harder to find — or even imagine.
The power of capital is in the voluntary surrender of its subjects to their own exploitation
Because power so often involves coercion, Han argues, there has been a tendency to see them as inextricable. But it is only when power is poor in mediation, felt as alien to our own lives and interests, that it resorts to threatened or actual violence. Where... See more
Because power so often involves coercion, Han argues, there has been a tendency to see them as inextricable. But it is only when power is poor in mediation, felt as alien to our own lives and interests, that it resorts to threatened or actual violence. Where... See more
Oliver Balch • Thought-tinkering – the Korean German philosopher Byung-Chul Han | Aeon Essays
We do the exploiting to ourselves, and we do it willingly. That’s the real flex of capitalism today — it doesn’t need to force us to work harder, hustle more, or optimise every inch of our life. We choose to do it, thinking it’s our own idea.
1.
Old-school power = coercion.
Think: dictatorship, threats, punishment. You obey because you’re afraid.
2.
New-school power = consent.
You comply not because you’re forced — but because it feels like you want to. It speaks to your dreams, your hustle, your freedom, your “potential.”
Under the rule of digital capitalism, time itself is severed from any ‘narrative or teleological tension’, that is, from any discernible purpose or meaning, and so, like the digital paintings in an immersive show, it ‘disintegrates into points which whizz around without any sense of direction.’ In such a regime of time, there is no possibility of E... See more
Oliver Balch • Thought-tinkering – the Korean German philosopher Byung-Chul Han | Aeon Essays
To digitalise a painting is to decompose it, to deprive it of ground
For a work of art to have this effect, it must in some sense resist us, cause a disturbance of our familiar modes of language and perception. To be receptive to this kind of disturbance requires certain basic experiential conditions; we must be in an environment that permits linger... See more
For a work of art to have this effect, it must in some sense resist us, cause a disturbance of our familiar modes of language and perception. To be receptive to this kind of disturbance requires certain basic experiential conditions; we must be in an environment that permits linger... See more
Oliver Balch • Thought-tinkering – the Korean German philosopher Byung-Chul Han | Aeon Essays
The importance of lingering, to be intentional with your presence and understanding what draws you or repulses you from the art, the works, the what-have-yous.
Enter one of these attractions after reading Han, and it will look rather more sinister than an elaborate exercise in kitsch gimmickry, since he believes that the cultural symptoms of digital capitalism effectively degrade the very nature of experience. Han regularly invokes Walter Benjamin’s distinction between the two senses of experience concent... See more
Oliver Balch • Thought-tinkering – the Korean German philosopher Byung-Chul Han | Aeon Essays
Digital Capitalism Drains Depth: Social media, immersive art, curated positivity—they flatten experience into shallow “events” (Erlebnis) rather than transformative encounters (Erfahrung). Art becomes consumable wallpaper rather than something that cracks you open.
With this triumph of positivity, the roughness of the demanding boss gives way to the smoothness (a key Han term) of the relentlessly encouraging coach. On this view, depression is the definitive malaise of the achievement society: the effect of being always made to feel that we’re running hopelessly behind our own ego-ideal, exhausting ourselves i... See more
Oliver Balch • Thought-tinkering – the Korean German philosopher Byung-Chul Han | Aeon Essays
Instead of being bossed around (“you must”), we now drive ourselves with “you can” positivity — and collapse under the pressure. Han argues this shift from superego guilt to ego‑ideal positivity fuels burnout and depression, because we’re constantly chasing an unattainable ideal
In other words, the superego has its origin in figures external to us, so that, when it tells us what to do, it is as though we are hearing an order from someone else. The achievement society of our time, Han argues, runs not on superego guilt but ego-ideal positivity – not from a ‘you must’ but a ‘you can’. The ego-ideal is that image of our own p... See more
Oliver Balch • Thought-tinkering – the Korean German philosopher Byung-Chul Han | Aeon Essays
It is the superego that is making us live in a hamster wheel of doing more. The grind bears down from above, for we see ourselves as having to be more.
It lives in us not as a persecutory other but as a kind of higher version of oneself, a voice of relentless encouragement to do and be more.