This short book is a transcription of three lectures Han gave in April of 2023. The series of talks, in Leipzig, Porto, and Lisbon, was rare as Han rarely travels from his home in Berlin. In Leipzig, Han gave a talk interspersed with a pianist playing Bach’s Goldberg Variations. He began by describing his method of working, “When I am thinking I often feel I am taking off with my wings. I love these flights of speculation that are accompanied by two wings, dos pianos de cola, and their music. Heidegger also experienced thinking as a speculative flight that uses two wings…. Without the beat of a wing, without the wings of Eros, thinking is impossible. Someone who thinks must take off on the wings of Eros onto untrodden paths, onto the not-yet-born, or the coming, even into the new…. Without flowers I am not able to think…. I make great efforts, and I will continue to make great efforts, to make my thinking smell of flowers too. That is where the truth is.” He also defended his oeuvre, “Some people accuse me of too much repetition. But they do not understand that my books are not repetitions, they are variations.”
In Porto, Han critiqued modern society, “If asked to summarize my philosophical thoughts in one sentence, I would say: The Other disappears…. Are we today still capable of touching – of touching the Other, that is? Physical touch is very important for the cohesion of a community. The hand, the squeeze of the hand, is what creates trust. Despite, or because of, digital interconnectedness and communication there is very little touching in our society.” He discussed depression, “The ego rests isolated in itself, and this poverty in world makes us depressive…. Anyone who has been depressive, who suffered a deep depression, knows that a depressive person loses the world. He is without world.” Han continued reciting the woes of modernity and technology, “So, permanently typing and swiping on the smartphone has an enormous effect on our relation to the world, to the Other. Information that does not interest me is quickly swiped away. Content I like, on the contrary, I zoom closer with my fingers. I have the world firmly in my grip. The world must conform to whatever I want from it. In this way, the smartphone intensifies our self-centredness. Typing around, I subjugate the world to my needs…. The smartphone actually permits us to retreat into a sphere that is protected against the imponderables associated with the Other, into a digital bubble that shields us from the Other…. It turns a You into an It. We should turn the It into a You again. You, that is the Other…. Since the spread of the smartphone we less and less look each other in the eyes. The gaze is lost. But the gaze is the Other…. We exploit ourselves voluntarily and passionately under the illusion that we realize ourselves by doing so. The destructive pressure does not come from the Other but from ourselves. I am not exploited, whipped by the master, I whip myself, I exploit myself. I am master and slave at one and the same time.”
Han discussed the paradox of freedom in the contemporary world, “The self as project, which believes it has liberated itself from external coercion and coercion by others, submits itself to the inner compulsion to achieve and optimize itself. We exploit ourselves believing we realize ourselves…. The freedom of being-able-to creates even more compulsions than the disciplinary you-ought-to which puts forward precepts and prohibitions. The ought has limits. Being-able-to, ability, in contrast, knows no limits…. The neoliberal achievement-subject believes itself to be free but in truth is a slave. It is an absolute slave in the sense that, in the absence of a master, it exploits itself voluntarily…. The disappearance of the Other is a pathological phenomenon of the present. Being connected is not the same as being together. The limitless connectivity actually weakens our ties…. An intensive relation presupposes an Other who is not at my disposal. Only the non-availability of the Other makes closeness possible…. The Other is not an available and consumable object.”
Finally, in Lisbon, Han discussed the lack of transcendence in modernity, “I said that the life of a monk is a very happy life because the ideal monk, a monk, that is, who is not corrupted, lives off transcendence. In our society of consumption and achievement all transcendence is lost. This makes us unreal. Transcendence does not agree with the immanence of consumption or achievement or production. God does not consume. God also does not produce. And God’s creation is not an achievement, it is an act of love. We are currently losing ourselves, we even vegetate in the immanence of production and consumption. Life without transcendence withers and becomes nothing but the satisfaction of needs. This consumerist life, this life without transcendence, is a life without happiness, a poor, miserable, impoverished, atrophied life. This is not a human life, but the life of cattle.”
No comments:
Post a Comment