The ultimate purpose of all human endeavour is inactivity.

Byung-Chul Han is a self-admitted lazy thinker. He writes just three sentences a day (per this interview). You will find out after reading a couple of his books that those three sentences mostly talk about the same thing - life under neoliberalism and its effect on the (achievement) subject. This book covers the importance of the vita contemplativa, which is denied to the modern achievement subject, who lives under neoliberalism.

The world seems preoccupied with the optimisation of one's time on Earth. Everyone is focused on self-improvement and side hustles &c. Popular culture is filled with messages and clichés about making as much money as possible. Everything around us encourages us to be as active as possible. We must constantly work, if not for money, then on ourselves. This is the vita activa.

Han argues that inactivity constitutes the human. All human activities are made human only by moments of pause and hesitation. Inactivity is what creates culture. Culture's essence is decoration, it is untouched by functionality or usefulness. The existence of culture is what elevates life above survival. Herein lies the importance of the vita contemplativa. Losing our ability to be inactive, we are more akin to animals focused on survival or machines that must simply function. We are living a bare life, our activity only serves to extend our life. Production, performance and consumption are indicators of survival, not of living.

The newborn open their eyes not to act but to look.

This behavior is learned. Han insists that it is the fault of the neoliberal regime, which makes society performative. We are all competitively improving our performance. Neoliberalism is especially potent at this because it creates the illusory tie between performance and freedom (think of the idea of financial freedom, towards which most of us aspire). The efficiency lies in hiding the conflict between slave and master. The reason why you are not shouted at in a factory is that you are a more efficient worker when you become your own enslaved master. The class conflict is transposed to the inner life of the achievement subject. Per Dostoevsky: "The best way to keep a prisoner from escaping is to make sure he never knows he’s in prison."

In similar fashion to his other books, Byung-Chul Han makes frequent citations from the philosophers that came before him (especially Heidegger, on whom he wrote his PhD thesis). He usually considers this a strong enough justification for the point he's trying to make. Don't expect very fleshed out, impenetrable systems of thought or arguments. Han prefers striking, accessible statements. I feel that most of the time this works in his favor. A good chunk of this book is his disagreement with Hannah Arendt's politics of activity (check out this subtle burn when talking about her book, The Human Condition: "[Arendt] then, unexpectedly, mentions thinking, which has not featured in the book up to this point.")

This is definitely the kind of book which has the potential to change your perspective on life and the way you live, if you have this kind of self-optimising personality (and you almost definitely do, if you are regularly using the internet).

robot10

robot10

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