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The Scent of Time: A Philosophical Essay on the Art of Lingering
In his philosophical reflections on the art of lingering, acclaimed cultural theorist Byung-Chul Han argues that the value we attach today to the vita activa is producing a crisis in our sense of time. Our attachment to the vita activa creates an imperative to work which degrades the human being into a labouring animal, an animal laborans. At the same time, the hyperactivity which characterizes our daily routines robs human beings of the capacity to linger and the faculty of contemplation. It therefore becomes impossible to experience time as fulfilling.
Drawing on a range of thinkers including Heidegger, Nietzsche and Arendt, Han argues that we can overcome this temporal crisis only by revitalizing the vita contemplativa and relearning the art of lingering. For what distinguishes humans from other animals is the capacity for reflection and contemplation, and when life regains this capacity, this art of lingering, it gains in time and space, in duration and vastness.
Drawing on a range of thinkers including Heidegger, Nietzsche and Arendt, Han argues that we can overcome this temporal crisis only by revitalizing the vita contemplativa and relearning the art of lingering. For what distinguishes humans from other animals is the capacity for reflection and contemplation, and when life regains this capacity, this art of lingering, it gains in time and space, in duration and vastness.
120 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2009
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About the author
Byung-Chul Han
57 books4,823 followersByung-Chul Han, also spelled Pyŏng-ch'ŏl Han (born 1959 in Seoul), is a German author, cultural theorist, and Professor at the Universität der Künste Berlin (UdK) in Berlin, Germany.
Byung-Chul Han studied metallurgy in Korea before he moved to Germany in the 1980s to study Philosophy, German Literature and Catholic theology in Freiburg im Breisgau and Munich. He received his doctoral degree at Freiburg with a dissertation on Martin Heidegger in 1994.
In 2000, he joined the Department of Philosophy at the University of Basel, where he completed his Habilitation. In 2010 he became a faculty member at the HfG Karlsruhe, where his areas of interest were philosophy of the 18th, 19th and 20th century, ethics, social philosophy, phenomenology, cultural theory, aesthetics, religion, media theory, and intercultural philosophy. Since 2012 he teaches philosophy and cultural studies at the Universität der Künste Berlin (UdK), where he directs the newly established Studium Generale general-studies program.
Han is the author of sixteen books, of which the most recent are treatises on what he terms a "society of tiredness" (Müdigkeitsgesellschaft), a "society of transparency" (Transparenzgesellschaft), and on his neologist concept of shanzai, which seeks to identify modes of deconstruction in contemporary practices of Chinese capitalism.
Han's current work focuses on transparency as a cultural norm created by neoliberal market forces, which he understands as the insatiable drive toward voluntary disclosure bordering on the pornographic. According to Han, the dictates of transparency enforce a totalitarian system of openness at the expense of other social values such as shame, secrecy, and trust.
Until recently, he refused to give radio and television interviews and rarely divulges any biographical or personal details, including his date of birth, in public.
Han has written on topics such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, borderline, burnout, depression, exhaustion, internet, love, pop culture, power, rationality, religion, social media, subjectivity, tiredness, transparency and violence.
Byung-Chul Han studied metallurgy in Korea before he moved to Germany in the 1980s to study Philosophy, German Literature and Catholic theology in Freiburg im Breisgau and Munich. He received his doctoral degree at Freiburg with a dissertation on Martin Heidegger in 1994.
In 2000, he joined the Department of Philosophy at the University of Basel, where he completed his Habilitation. In 2010 he became a faculty member at the HfG Karlsruhe, where his areas of interest were philosophy of the 18th, 19th and 20th century, ethics, social philosophy, phenomenology, cultural theory, aesthetics, religion, media theory, and intercultural philosophy. Since 2012 he teaches philosophy and cultural studies at the Universität der Künste Berlin (UdK), where he directs the newly established Studium Generale general-studies program.
Han is the author of sixteen books, of which the most recent are treatises on what he terms a "society of tiredness" (Müdigkeitsgesellschaft), a "society of transparency" (Transparenzgesellschaft), and on his neologist concept of shanzai, which seeks to identify modes of deconstruction in contemporary practices of Chinese capitalism.
Han's current work focuses on transparency as a cultural norm created by neoliberal market forces, which he understands as the insatiable drive toward voluntary disclosure bordering on the pornographic. According to Han, the dictates of transparency enforce a totalitarian system of openness at the expense of other social values such as shame, secrecy, and trust.
Until recently, he refused to give radio and television interviews and rarely divulges any biographical or personal details, including his date of birth, in public.
Han has written on topics such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, borderline, burnout, depression, exhaustion, internet, love, pop culture, power, rationality, religion, social media, subjectivity, tiredness, transparency and violence.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 244 reviews
October 25, 2018
Me queda claro que tengo que leer a Heidegger, a quien Chul Han cita mucho. También cita a otra de mis consentidas, la Hannah Arendt, pero para discutir sobre el tema Vita activa, (que ella defiende), y el Vita contemplativa. Lo que más me queda de este libro, es el tema del aroma del tiempo, con lo de la manera de medir el tiempo con incienso, por alguna razón eso me encantó, y se me queda como imagen. Hay muchas ideas lindas que me quedan dando vueltas, sobre el intentar bajar la aceleración. Y dar importancia a la memoria, porque sin memoria somos cosas que flotan sin sentido, opinando sin reflexionar, y que no construimos nada. También que hay que defender la posibilidad de aburrirnos, eso es algo que hace tiempo que se nos fue, pensamos que quedarnos quietos, o el ocio son cosas negativas. Todavía me acuerdo cuando en mi casa no teníamos tele, y lo bueno que fue en su momento.
August 14, 2018
I recognize the irony of writing a review on a book about contemplation on a website that has an annual Reading Challenge.
A bit repetitive, but the book has made me seriously consider deleting social media, focus less on Trump news, and read without consideration of finishing and starting a new book.
To take a breath.
The last chapter was the best.
A bit repetitive, but the book has made me seriously consider deleting social media, focus less on Trump news, and read without consideration of finishing and starting a new book.
To take a breath.
The last chapter was the best.
April 3, 2023
Only the contemplative devotion to truth, not virtue and not prudence, brings man close to the gods.
As a whole, this is a mosaic, a journey lined with immanence as concepts blossom and waft, linking sidelong to a future appropriation. I’m still not overly familiar with this philosopher, who appears more poet than analyst (suggesting like Rorty mused Derrida was a satirist, but what a satirist—I rejoin!) but he links disparate concepts of time: Proust with Heidegger: both rejecting the atomized existence enforced by technology. A particularly effective citation is Adorno on hastened sleeplessness. All of which lends itself to a favoring of the contemplative, and thus the preservation/creation of such a possibility: even as we are besieged by work and our precious connectedness.
The final section examines the active life but one shorn of hesitation and contemplation. Arendt argued that it is the acting, the agency which affords meaning. The author doesn’t and I tend to agree.
I will definitely seek other works from this philosopher.
As a whole, this is a mosaic, a journey lined with immanence as concepts blossom and waft, linking sidelong to a future appropriation. I’m still not overly familiar with this philosopher, who appears more poet than analyst (suggesting like Rorty mused Derrida was a satirist, but what a satirist—I rejoin!) but he links disparate concepts of time: Proust with Heidegger: both rejecting the atomized existence enforced by technology. A particularly effective citation is Adorno on hastened sleeplessness. All of which lends itself to a favoring of the contemplative, and thus the preservation/creation of such a possibility: even as we are besieged by work and our precious connectedness.
The final section examines the active life but one shorn of hesitation and contemplation. Arendt argued that it is the acting, the agency which affords meaning. The author doesn’t and I tend to agree.
I will definitely seek other works from this philosopher.
July 21, 2025
3,5 ★
"Hoje em dia, as coisas ligadas à temporalidade envelhecem muito mais rapidamente do que antes. Tornam-se instantaneamente em passado e, assim, deixam de captar a atenção. O presente reduz-se a picos de atualidade. Já não dura.
(...)
A causa da contração do presente ou desta duração minguante não se deve, ao contrário do que muitas vezes erradamente se pensa, à aceleração. A ligação entre a perda da duração e a aceleração é muito mais complexa. O tempo precipita-se como uma avalanche porque deixou de encontrar seja o que for que o sustente no interior de si próprio. Cada ponto do presente, entre os quais já não existe qualquer força de atração temporal, faz com que o tempo se desenfreie, com que os processos acelerem sem direção alguma - e é precisamente a falta de qualquer direção que faz com que não possamos falar de aceleração. A aceleração, no sentido estrito, pressupõe caminhos unidirecionais.
(...)
Não é a eterna repetição do mesmo o que dota o tempo de sentido, mas a possibilidade da mudança."
Páginas 17, 18 e 26
"Hoje em dia, as coisas ligadas à temporalidade envelhecem muito mais rapidamente do que antes. Tornam-se instantaneamente em passado e, assim, deixam de captar a atenção. O presente reduz-se a picos de atualidade. Já não dura.
(...)
A causa da contração do presente ou desta duração minguante não se deve, ao contrário do que muitas vezes erradamente se pensa, à aceleração. A ligação entre a perda da duração e a aceleração é muito mais complexa. O tempo precipita-se como uma avalanche porque deixou de encontrar seja o que for que o sustente no interior de si próprio. Cada ponto do presente, entre os quais já não existe qualquer força de atração temporal, faz com que o tempo se desenfreie, com que os processos acelerem sem direção alguma - e é precisamente a falta de qualquer direção que faz com que não possamos falar de aceleração. A aceleração, no sentido estrito, pressupõe caminhos unidirecionais.
(...)
Não é a eterna repetição do mesmo o que dota o tempo de sentido, mas a possibilidade da mudança."
Páginas 17, 18 e 26
November 14, 2018
“Hiçbir şey ölümden uzun ömürlü değil.Dolayısıyla bugün ölmek,çok zor.Ve insanlar,yaşlanmadan yaş alıyor.”
.
“Günümüzün zaman krizinin önemli nedenlerinden biri,vita activa’nın,eylemlilik yaşamının mutlaklaştırılması.Bu mutlaklaştırma,insanı bir animal laborans,’çalışan hayvan’ derecesine indiren bir çalışma buyruğuna yol açıyor.Gündelik hayattaki hiperkinezi,aşırı hareketlilik,insan yaşamındaki tefekkür unsurunu,durma becerisini ortadan kaldırıyor.”
.
Byung Chul Han bu eserinde zamanı ele alıyor ancak zamanı bir kalıba koymuyor.Onu ileri ya da geri giden değil “süzülen” bir kavram olarak ele alırken;geçmişten günümüze eylem ve düşünme arasındaki ilişkiyi de irdeliyor.
.
Günümüzde ‘zaman’ın nasıl algılandığı,hangi noktaya evrildiğini görme açısından,incelikli bir çalışma ‘Zamanın kokusu’. Bölümler halinde incelenen konudan özellikle “Antik Çin’e kısa bir sapma” sunduğu metaforla okuma keyfini daha da üst seviyeye taşıyor.
.
.
“Günümüzün zaman krizinin önemli nedenlerinden biri,vita activa’nın,eylemlilik yaşamının mutlaklaştırılması.Bu mutlaklaştırma,insanı bir animal laborans,’çalışan hayvan’ derecesine indiren bir çalışma buyruğuna yol açıyor.Gündelik hayattaki hiperkinezi,aşırı hareketlilik,insan yaşamındaki tefekkür unsurunu,durma becerisini ortadan kaldırıyor.”
.
Byung Chul Han bu eserinde zamanı ele alıyor ancak zamanı bir kalıba koymuyor.Onu ileri ya da geri giden değil “süzülen” bir kavram olarak ele alırken;geçmişten günümüze eylem ve düşünme arasındaki ilişkiyi de irdeliyor.
.
Günümüzde ‘zaman’ın nasıl algılandığı,hangi noktaya evrildiğini görme açısından,incelikli bir çalışma ‘Zamanın kokusu’. Bölümler halinde incelenen konudan özellikle “Antik Çin’e kısa bir sapma” sunduğu metaforla okuma keyfini daha da üst seviyeye taşıyor.
.
February 11, 2019
Really fascinating. An exploration of our contemporary world wherein the vita activa has replaced the vita contemplativa, where, with the atomization of time and identity, we’re accelerating our lives, have this inclination to think that if we live twice the experiences, we’ll be twice as likely to feel fulfilled. Which is, of course, wrong. And we’re not inhabiting duration, we’re not lingering, we’re condensing everything into this point-based now-time and in so doing, we’re robbing ourselves of the very act of lingering, wherein we are more likely to find completion, and therefore fulfillment.
February 24, 2024
‘—McLuhan refers to an interesting experiment which seems to provide a physiological basis, so to speak, for Proust’s experience of the madeleine. The stimulation of brain tissue during surgery revives many memories, and these are saturated with special scents and smells which structure them into units and thus form a scaffold for early experiences.Scent is steeped in history, so to speak. It is filled with stories, with narrative images.’
Worth every second of one’s time even if just for the chapter(s) with Proustian influence/discourse. Been a while since I’ve read any of Han’s work, but I knew I loved them since the first introduction years ago. I was deliberating between this one and Vita Contemplativa, but started with this just because I was really drawn to the title. I reckon they might have overlapping philosophies, etc.; but the one I’m actually more keen to acquire a copy of is The Crisis of Narration which should be published quite soon (the text in (English) translation that is).
‘The narration gives time a scent. Point-time, by contrast, is a time without scent. Time begins to emit a scent when it gains duration; when it is given a narrative or deep tension; when it gains depth and breadth, even space. Time loses its scent when it is divested of all deep structure or sense, when it is atomized or when it flattens out, thins out or shortens. If it detaches entirely from the anchoring which holds, even inhibits [verhält], it, then it becomes devoid of all support [haltlos]. Taken out of its mount [Halterung], so to speak, it rushes off [stürzt fort]. Acceleration—is not a primary process which subsequently leads to various changes within the lifeworld, but a symptom, a secondary process, that is, a consequence of time having lost its hold and having been atomized, its being without any inhibiting gravitation. Time rushes off [stürzt fort], even in a precipitous haste [überstürzt sich], in order to compensate for an essential lack of being.’
‘Tellingly, Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdue begins by saying ‘Longtemps, je me suis couché de bonne heure’ (For a long time I would go to bed early). In the English translation, the expression ‘bonne heure’ disappears altogether. These are far-reaching words on time and happiness (bonheur). The bonne heure, the good time, is the counter-image to bad infinity, to empty and therefore bad duration in which no sleep is possible. Torn time [Zeitriß], the radical discontinuity of time which does not allow for remembrance, leads to a torturous sleeplessness. The first passages of Proust’s novel, by contrast, present a gladdening experience of continuity, the mise en scène of an effortless hovering between sleeping, dreaming and awakening again, amidst a fluid medium made up of images belonging to memory and perception, a free to-and-fro between the past and present, between solid order and playful confusion. There is no tearing of time that would throw the protagonist into an empty duration.’
October 13, 2024
“Contemplative lingering gives time. It widens that being that is more than being-active. When life regains its capacity for contemplation, it gains in time and space, in duration and vastness” (113)
An essay on the art of lingering, being in time, appreciating things as they are and reclaiming the vita contemplativa as a complement and corrective to the vita activa. Vita activa has been over-emphasized to the point of us developing neuroses of perpetual activity, achievement, betterment, all of which serves our economic system well but which rests on us developing a mindset of willing self-exploitation. This over-emphasis on activity comes about because of our lack of relationship to time. Instead of experiencing life in terms of the duration of a moment we tend to see it as a sequence of moments or places or events and all the “in-between” spaces that we hurtle through to get there.
BCH describes our modern age as experiencing a crisis of “dyschronicity” or a feeling of times being out of synch with one another. We have a feeling of time moving fast, moving us from one event or happening to another but it also being directionless. We move fast and don’t experience the temporality of movement. (vi)
I’m reminded of Marc Augé’s work on non-places, the interstitial places that we merely move through but do not experience in any meaningful way. They are the hallways and corridors of our lives, places like waiting rooms, train stations, airports, lines at the supermarket. In those spaces we are waiting to be active having moved from one room, or location, or activity and waiting to get to the next, “killing” time or “wasting” time to move on with our lives. This experience of time as fragmented, disconnected “here”s and the desire to get from one to the next contributes to a sense of time speeding up and our lives being thrown about. We have lost the ability to linger, to take time, to consider, to experience, to contemplate. But to do so requires a different awareness of time and the relationship of things in our world to each other. We need to learn to be in time (plenty of Heidegger in this volume) to dwell in the moment and not be oriented to what is next. We should stop and consider how things “thing” — how rocks persist, how fogs lift, how meadows spread, how clouds hang … in and through time.
Now, what contemplation consists of is less well specified, maybe because it does not mean one thing and could mean some thing that allows us to gather our senses, to pursue an understanding of the truth of a thing in time. We sit and linger without being drawn to the next thing.
I like the idea but can help but feel that there is a bit of assumptive privilege built into this. There is a reason why Aristotle thought that ideal life of contemplation was for the gods. Those of us here on Earth .. well many of us do not have the ability to say no to excessive activity, to take the time to linger. We work hard and we are exhausted when we are done, leaving little time for contemplation. But it’s not impossible. One of the things I like so much about Simone Weil’s investigations of the crushing relentlessness of labor is that it is still possible to find dignity in labor by focusing on the beautiful and eternal in the movements of work, creating duration in the infinite divisibility of time.
An essay on the art of lingering, being in time, appreciating things as they are and reclaiming the vita contemplativa as a complement and corrective to the vita activa. Vita activa has been over-emphasized to the point of us developing neuroses of perpetual activity, achievement, betterment, all of which serves our economic system well but which rests on us developing a mindset of willing self-exploitation. This over-emphasis on activity comes about because of our lack of relationship to time. Instead of experiencing life in terms of the duration of a moment we tend to see it as a sequence of moments or places or events and all the “in-between” spaces that we hurtle through to get there.
BCH describes our modern age as experiencing a crisis of “dyschronicity” or a feeling of times being out of synch with one another. We have a feeling of time moving fast, moving us from one event or happening to another but it also being directionless. We move fast and don’t experience the temporality of movement. (vi)
I’m reminded of Marc Augé’s work on non-places, the interstitial places that we merely move through but do not experience in any meaningful way. They are the hallways and corridors of our lives, places like waiting rooms, train stations, airports, lines at the supermarket. In those spaces we are waiting to be active having moved from one room, or location, or activity and waiting to get to the next, “killing” time or “wasting” time to move on with our lives. This experience of time as fragmented, disconnected “here”s and the desire to get from one to the next contributes to a sense of time speeding up and our lives being thrown about. We have lost the ability to linger, to take time, to consider, to experience, to contemplate. But to do so requires a different awareness of time and the relationship of things in our world to each other. We need to learn to be in time (plenty of Heidegger in this volume) to dwell in the moment and not be oriented to what is next. We should stop and consider how things “thing” — how rocks persist, how fogs lift, how meadows spread, how clouds hang … in and through time.
Now, what contemplation consists of is less well specified, maybe because it does not mean one thing and could mean some thing that allows us to gather our senses, to pursue an understanding of the truth of a thing in time. We sit and linger without being drawn to the next thing.
I like the idea but can help but feel that there is a bit of assumptive privilege built into this. There is a reason why Aristotle thought that ideal life of contemplation was for the gods. Those of us here on Earth .. well many of us do not have the ability to say no to excessive activity, to take the time to linger. We work hard and we are exhausted when we are done, leaving little time for contemplation. But it’s not impossible. One of the things I like so much about Simone Weil’s investigations of the crushing relentlessness of labor is that it is still possible to find dignity in labor by focusing on the beautiful and eternal in the movements of work, creating duration in the infinite divisibility of time.
May 1, 2023
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220109: dense, difficult, diverse. this is the second han book i have read after Saving Beauty and possibly even more dense with arguments, allusions, names and histories. essential concern is that we postmodernists (?) are losing the ability to linger, to experience 'time' in full thickness... and toward this assertion han enlists everyone from proust, nietzsche, heidegger... authors read but he gets even more out of them, certainly proust, though heidegger still comes across often as opaque...
there is the argument we have lost the ancient greek philosophical ideal of the vita contemplata and become obsessed with 'work', have become vita activa, that is, we have become 'labouring' animal rather than 'thoughtful' and this is only symptomatic in the acceleration of our lives. production and consumption are borne of capitalism, in turn borne of calvinism, and han finds this threaded through our culture and not alleviated by having more 'free time', which we find ways to 'consume', to 'kill'... we are not aware of the way in which we are in time... this entire work inspires me to think of duration in henri bergson, though he is not mentioned...
220109: dense, difficult, diverse. this is the second han book i have read after Saving Beauty and possibly even more dense with arguments, allusions, names and histories. essential concern is that we postmodernists (?) are losing the ability to linger, to experience 'time' in full thickness... and toward this assertion han enlists everyone from proust, nietzsche, heidegger... authors read but he gets even more out of them, certainly proust, though heidegger still comes across often as opaque...
there is the argument we have lost the ancient greek philosophical ideal of the vita contemplata and become obsessed with 'work', have become vita activa, that is, we have become 'labouring' animal rather than 'thoughtful' and this is only symptomatic in the acceleration of our lives. production and consumption are borne of capitalism, in turn borne of calvinism, and han finds this threaded through our culture and not alleviated by having more 'free time', which we find ways to 'consume', to 'kill'... we are not aware of the way in which we are in time... this entire work inspires me to think of duration in henri bergson, though he is not mentioned...
April 23, 2022
In this extended essay, by one of my favorite living philosophers, the notion of time handed down to us from Heidegger and Nietzsche is unpacked. He does this to eventually undermine Arendt.
Han starts by questioning notions of time acceleration that is commonly held. This comes from Heidegger and is based on paradigms of productivity. He then suggests accelerating time is no longer teleological but has become "atomized." I have never seen the term atomized used with reference to time in this way but I think it is very apt. This could be traced back to Benedict Anderson's classic work, Imagined Communities, in which he discusses the way modern concepts of time are transitive and flat. Time is no longer gathered into frames that give rhythm to the calendar, like feast days and normal time, etc.
He says, "Time is lacking a rhythm that would provide order, and thus it falls out of step. Dyschronicity lets time whizz, so to speak. The feeling that life is accelerating is really the experience of a time that is whizzing without a direction.”
I LOVED the inclusion of Bedini, Silvio A. (1963). "The Scent of Time. A Study of the Use of Fire and Incense for Time Measurement in Oriental Countries. That is a favorite book of mine and I appreciated he picked up on the title. And content.
The last chapter was the high point of the book because he pushes back against Arendt's notion of vita activa. "Han argues that we can overcome this temporal crisis only by revitalizing the vita contemplativa and relearning the art of lingering. For what distinguishes humans from other animals is the capacity for reflection and contemplation, and when life regains this capacity, this art of lingering, it gains in time and space, in duration and vastness.
Our modern age is characterized by its hyper-activity. Its frenzied, anxious, hyper activity posing as productivity, he says. Don't kill the messenger but the great man has a point.
Han starts by questioning notions of time acceleration that is commonly held. This comes from Heidegger and is based on paradigms of productivity. He then suggests accelerating time is no longer teleological but has become "atomized." I have never seen the term atomized used with reference to time in this way but I think it is very apt. This could be traced back to Benedict Anderson's classic work, Imagined Communities, in which he discusses the way modern concepts of time are transitive and flat. Time is no longer gathered into frames that give rhythm to the calendar, like feast days and normal time, etc.
He says, "Time is lacking a rhythm that would provide order, and thus it falls out of step. Dyschronicity lets time whizz, so to speak. The feeling that life is accelerating is really the experience of a time that is whizzing without a direction.”
I LOVED the inclusion of Bedini, Silvio A. (1963). "The Scent of Time. A Study of the Use of Fire and Incense for Time Measurement in Oriental Countries. That is a favorite book of mine and I appreciated he picked up on the title. And content.
The last chapter was the high point of the book because he pushes back against Arendt's notion of vita activa. "Han argues that we can overcome this temporal crisis only by revitalizing the vita contemplativa and relearning the art of lingering. For what distinguishes humans from other animals is the capacity for reflection and contemplation, and when life regains this capacity, this art of lingering, it gains in time and space, in duration and vastness.
Our modern age is characterized by its hyper-activity. Its frenzied, anxious, hyper activity posing as productivity, he says. Don't kill the messenger but the great man has a point.
July 22, 2023
Zaman kavramını zamandan bağımsız özelliklerle ilişkilendirip irdeleyen, sonuç da sunan denemeler kitabı Zamanın Kokusu. Byung-Chul Han günümüze dair birçok kavram ve olay üzerine derinlemesine analitik ve de didaktik bir metin sunmak yerine çözümlenmesi kolay, anlaşılır, edebi anlatımı yerinde, bölümlerin tümüne baktığımda da bir bütünselliğin var olduğu metinler veriyor bize. Kafa patlatmadan da ufkunuzu açabilirim tavrını sevdim.
Bazı bölümler çok keyifli, Tarihin Hızı, Uygun Adım Yürüme Çağında Dolanıp Durma Çağına ve en çok sevdiğim bölüm, Şimdiki Zamanın Paradoksu; Prosut’un yakalamaya çalıştığı zamana, tabii ki çaya batıran kurabiyeye kadar gidiyor olay.
***
Şunu da eklemek istiyorum, başlangıç sayfalarında sıkıldım çünkü “zaman ve hız” kelimeleri ile kurulu cümleler o kadar peşi sıra tekrarlandı ki sanki bir sarmalda aynı cümleyi okuyup duruyormuş gibi hissettim. Bir yandan da kitabın çok iyi olduğunun farkındayım, devam etmek istiyorum tabii. Kitaptan bıkmamak metnin anlamını kaçırmamak adına her gün sadece bir bölüm okudum ben.
***
Palyatif Toplum popülerliğine baktığımda Byung-Chul Han’ın okumaktan keyif almışız. Peşini bırakmamak lazım. Diğer kitapları hala birinci baskıda. Başarılı bir sosyolog Chul Han.
Bazı bölümler çok keyifli, Tarihin Hızı, Uygun Adım Yürüme Çağında Dolanıp Durma Çağına ve en çok sevdiğim bölüm, Şimdiki Zamanın Paradoksu; Prosut’un yakalamaya çalıştığı zamana, tabii ki çaya batıran kurabiyeye kadar gidiyor olay.
***
Şunu da eklemek istiyorum, başlangıç sayfalarında sıkıldım çünkü “zaman ve hız” kelimeleri ile kurulu cümleler o kadar peşi sıra tekrarlandı ki sanki bir sarmalda aynı cümleyi okuyup duruyormuş gibi hissettim. Bir yandan da kitabın çok iyi olduğunun farkındayım, devam etmek istiyorum tabii. Kitaptan bıkmamak metnin anlamını kaçırmamak adına her gün sadece bir bölüm okudum ben.
***
Palyatif Toplum popülerliğine baktığımda Byung-Chul Han’ın okumaktan keyif almışız. Peşini bırakmamak lazım. Diğer kitapları hala birinci baskıda. Başarılı bir sosyolog Chul Han.
February 8, 2017
Uma explanação interessante sobre o tempo, baseada na filosofia, com várias referências a Heidegger, algumas a Proust (com o seu "A la recherche...") e Arendt.
Apreciei particularmente o capítulo "Relógio aromático: um breve excurso sobre a China Antiga".
P. 71- "Até finais do século XIX, utilizou-se na China o relógio de incenso, cujo nome era "hsiang yin" (literalmente, "selo de aroma").
P. 72- "O "hsiang yin" emana um aroma real. O aroma do incenso intensifica o aroma do tempo. Daí, o refinamento deste relógio chinês. O "hsiang yin" indica a hora num fluxo aromático de tempo, que não passa nem transcorre."
Apreciei particularmente o capítulo "Relógio aromático: um breve excurso sobre a China Antiga".
P. 71- "Até finais do século XIX, utilizou-se na China o relógio de incenso, cujo nome era "hsiang yin" (literalmente, "selo de aroma").
P. 72- "O "hsiang yin" emana um aroma real. O aroma do incenso intensifica o aroma do tempo. Daí, o refinamento deste relógio chinês. O "hsiang yin" indica a hora num fluxo aromático de tempo, que não passa nem transcorre."
January 6, 2022
somewhat compelling with moments of real interest, but i’ve realized i simply have an ontological disagreement with Han re: acceleration and modernity that’s a bit too glaring to move past. that’s alright though. agreement isn’t a prerequisite for enjoyment. i was distracted by how often Han presents ideas that already basically exist almost exactly as he articulates them - most notably Benjamin’s “messianic time” and Virilio’s notion of “picnolepsy”, neither of which get cited, and neither philosopher getting a name check either.
April 12, 2025
INTRO
This was probably the slowest I have read a book by Byung-Chul Han. First and foremost, it's a little longer than his usual 70-90-page pamphlet/essays. This one clocks in at 120 pages or so. Secondly, the material, as always, is dense. Han retains his aphoristic style in part, but numerous chapters break with this style and go into more detail. That is to say, they are more critical, and more scholarly (in the traditional academic way). These include his dealing with Hegel, Arendt, and others. Without becoming too verbose, I will give the reader of this review a brief synopsis. (Reviews such as this are mostly for myself when I go back to my books to see what material I was most impressed with).
Non-Time
Han opens and closes the book with quotes from Nietzsche. Nietzsche foresaw the flattening out of society with the death of God and the loss of foundation. He talks about the goddess "health" becoming a new queen over society. This is true today, as we have no desire to delay our gratification for a hereafter since there is "life and life only," to put it in the words of Bob Dylan. Thus, our obsession with health is twofold: 1. physical appearances 2. longevity or life expectancy. We cut up our bodies in order to look like everyone else and we become obsessed with the idea of living as long as possible (RE: forever) in an attempt to fabricate a new form of salvation; viz., eternal life.
Han opens up the book discussing how time has fractured because there is no weight or lingering to it anymore. Its essence has become vacuous. He calls this "non-time" (un-Zeit), which is a neologism made by him. Life becomes unbearable and also accelerates because there is no weight to time to hold back acceleration. He quotes Nietzsche in Zarathustra, how men seek drugs in order to feel something until they use ever-increasing forms of drugs until they simply die. Rather, they simply cease to exist. Han states that even the concept of dying well (think Seneca and the Stoics), no longer exists. We can't die well (as Socrates exhorts us to do in his Phaedo), because we don't have philosophy to guide our way, there is no contemplation because time goads us on with every increasing acceleration. Contrary to Camus and the philosophy of the absurd, Han informs us that a life well lived is not one of sheer quantity, but rather, quality.
All Things are Full of Gods
Such is the title of David Bentley Hart's new book (which I still need to read), and Han is riding the same train here. He tells us that the ancient world is full of the divine. A cascade of divinities, demi-gods, heroes, and humans make the world a world of plenitude, full of meaning and mystery. The ancient world, he states, as also cyclical. Thus a revolution (in its original etymology) is a re-volution, a turning again. If a power structure was thrown down, soon time would correct it. Since the age of the scientific revolution (no pun intended), and the age of the Enlightenment, we have a new τέλος to work towards, a great utopia where knowledge, work, and power intertwine in a perfect harmony: Utopia. Thus, we have been increasing our acceleration century after century until we have arrived at this point. The age of optimism and post-millennialism has passed. Now, however, we are striving towards a new salvation, grasping at something that will save us in the future, having abolished any concrete goal, and cast the gods and values down to hell. Where "myth gave way to history" and gave peoples a sense of origin, identity, a "whence," we suffer from no origin, myth, or whence. Thereby we suffer from no whither, and no wherefore. We are stuck in an age of information (Not truth, knowledge, or wisdom, which are slow, and need a sense of history and time), where we whizz back to and fro. Time serves work, and when we are not working, we simply--as the expression goes--need to "kill time," or else find more of it. Oh! the irony and hypocrisy.
The Panic of Modern Life
Han then moves into some issues that plague our modern society. He talks about Heidegger's Dasein and how technology seeks increasingly to break down distance (Heidegger would later modify his view). Han's example is the letter in the mail to the E-mail. E-mail is instant. In this respect, it's not even "ready-at-hand" (Bestand, to use a term from Heidegger), it is beyond the hand. Heidegger talks about the hand later in his later philosophy. The hand on a shoulder is the moment between. The "hesitation" that breaks open space. Han, in critiquing Hannah Arendt, states that it's the constitutive part of the vita activa, otherwise it is reduced down to mere labor, in the Marxist sense. We need our hands free, not in order to be able to "work more," (RE: hands-free devices in order to optimize "time," that is to work more; German word for the cell phone is "Handy"), but in order to linger, to tarry, to Weilen as Heidegger says, to "meanwhile" (112). It's disturbing when you go outside in 2025 and every g-d damn person is running around like a fly, buzzing about, with AirPods in their ears, giant cell phone in their hand, completely disconnected. Heidegger would say that they are removed from the facticity of the world. Because we have raised ourselves up to be a new Lord, we objectify everything, including ourselves, and time breaks down.
Our society today is anxious and imperiled; jittery and rushed; frenetic and lonely. While life tells us to live faster and stack up experiences. Han states "whoever tries to live faster, will ultimately die faster" (34). With no time there is no history. In fact, Han states that without Time, both history and truth will be outmoded concepts in the very near future. He is not wrong. We are arguing about history in this country right now, even in the state I live in (Florida). Who should write the history books? Historians? Politicians? Cui bonum? Whose interpretation of history? Nietzsche's threefold distinction of history (1. Antiquarian 2. Monumental 3. Critical) is obsolete when history retains no time, thereby rendering it without interpretation. With no time, and no lingering, walking turns into marching (109). The march of progress to the beat of a battle drum is dead, however. In "point-time," as Han puts it, there is only whizzing-about, because it lacks all direction and orientation. There cannot even be, strictly speaking, acceleration, since that presupposes a destination. All there is is doing (Latin:agere), which is a shaking, or an agitation. No wonder society is merely agitated all the time.
Vita Contemplativa
Han's work culminates in the longest chapter in the book, which is on the Vita Contempletiva or the contemplative life. Han sees this as the absolutely necessary remedy to our fractured world. He doesn't think that this is going to "fix" it. Rather, this is a clarion call to those looking to find their way out of the auto-exploitation and burnout that has ground us down to a pulp. Han thinks that there are increasingly fewer and fewer "thinkers." He quotes Aristotle, who states that the gods simply contemplate and do not work, and therefore are more blessed. The theoretical life, for Aristotle, was the life of the philosopher. To theorize (Theorein, where we get our word theory), meant to contemplate (con-templum Latin, for the temple, that is a walling off of the holy from the secular). It is not idleness, however, as even God is actus purus (a la Aquinas et al.), and therefore always in a state of pure activity. This is not "work" in the Marxist sense. Han does not think that owning the means of production will make one free; pace Marx, he states that Hegel's master-slave dialectic suffers in that both master and slave are still beholden to labor and are an animal laborans. Only when we can raise ourselves up from the chains and pressures of time in service of labor, can one truly be free. This is the life of contemplation. It is interesting that Chris Anderson heralded the End of Theory (https://www.wired.com/2008/06/pb-theory), since mathematical computation can do it faster and more efficiently. Models, mathematical models, artificially intelligent mathematical models become the new theory. Given the weight and gravity of of the etymology/mythology of the word "to theorize," we could say that this is the final nail on the coffin of God. Heidegger states, "Theory...in the old sense is the beholding that watches over truth...the reverent paying heed to the unconcealment of what presences (Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology, 164-165).
Heidegger actually does pick up on the etymological weight of theorein. Han misses an opportunity to make this connection. In. his essay Science and Reflection Heidegger ties the etymology of θεωρεῖν (to contemplate) back to two root words: Θεία and ὁράω. Θεία is of course the wife of Hyperion, a goddess and one of the twelve titans, who helps overthrow their father, Ouranos (I'm reading John Keats' Hyperion right now, so it's fresh on my mind!). Heidegger connects "theia" to Plato's forms (eidos), which is tied to knowing (wissen). The Greek verb "to see" is such an interesting example, because its future, perfect, and aorist forms are all built off of a different verbal stems, although they ultimately go back to the same verbal root, ϝιδ, which means to see or know. The present tense form, however, is from a completely different verbal stem. The present tense ὁράω (the second part of Theorein, means to see, to look upon, to perceive, from PIE root wer, which means to watch, to keep, to guard over. Hence, the οὖρος (watchers/guardians) of Plato's Republic.
In Proto-Indo-European weyd means to see, from which we get the words wise, wit, and witch in English; wissen in German; οἶδα (perfect tense, to know as 'to have seen'), εἶδον (aorist tense, to see), and εἴδομαι (middle voice: to be seen-as in, to seem, to appear, used intransitively, with a dative (reflexive) or with an infinitive) in Greek. In the Greek, they are simply different aspectual forms deriving from the same root word. Thus, the stems form a different aspect, which is why we have grammatical derivatives in manifold languages that connote both seeing and knowing. We also get ἵστωρ, which means judge, one who knows [laws], and therefore a wise man. We get the English word witness from this root. Also, ἱστορία, which means inquiry, examination, a "gazing or looking into," a narration of what is seen or learned, from which we get the English word history (Latin: historia from the Greek ἱστορία). The end of time, means the end of history. One cannot gaze towards that which reveals itself as being, and weave that which has been learned into a tapestry of truth--this is history--when there is no more knowledge or wisdom. There is just that which is in a line, in a form, ready at hand: this is information--Easily accessible, instantaneous. Thus, Han rightly concludes:
"In contrast to knowledge and experience [Erfahrung] in the emphatic sense, information and experienced events [Erlebnisse] produce no lasting or deep effects. The notions of truth and knowledge, by now, sound archaic. They rest on duration. Truth must endure. But, in fact, it fades away in the face of an increasingly shorter present. And knowledge is made possible by a temporal gathering which enframes the present with past and future. Such extended time characterizes truth as well as knowledge" (41).
Conclusion
How can we get ourselves out of this mess? Han's most informative and exciting chapter was called the Paradox of the Present. His last one on the contemplative life, however, was the most hopeful. The most curious one, was the one on the Chinese fragrant clock (hsiang yin, lit. seal of fragrance). Time becomes something that measures, but it is not calculation alone, it is lingering, fragrance, scent, duration, lastingness, nostalgia, recollection, memory, etc. Han's chapter on boredom was really good, also. There is much more I want to say but...I have to go pick up my daughter, and I am out of Time
"Oh! yes! Time has reappeared; Time is sovereign ruler now…Yes, Time reigns; he has resumed his brutal tyranny. And he pokes me with his double goad as if I were an ox. ‘Then hoi, donkey! Sweat, slave! Man, be damned and live.’"
-Charles Baudelaire, The Double Room
This was probably the slowest I have read a book by Byung-Chul Han. First and foremost, it's a little longer than his usual 70-90-page pamphlet/essays. This one clocks in at 120 pages or so. Secondly, the material, as always, is dense. Han retains his aphoristic style in part, but numerous chapters break with this style and go into more detail. That is to say, they are more critical, and more scholarly (in the traditional academic way). These include his dealing with Hegel, Arendt, and others. Without becoming too verbose, I will give the reader of this review a brief synopsis. (Reviews such as this are mostly for myself when I go back to my books to see what material I was most impressed with).
Non-Time
Han opens and closes the book with quotes from Nietzsche. Nietzsche foresaw the flattening out of society with the death of God and the loss of foundation. He talks about the goddess "health" becoming a new queen over society. This is true today, as we have no desire to delay our gratification for a hereafter since there is "life and life only," to put it in the words of Bob Dylan. Thus, our obsession with health is twofold: 1. physical appearances 2. longevity or life expectancy. We cut up our bodies in order to look like everyone else and we become obsessed with the idea of living as long as possible (RE: forever) in an attempt to fabricate a new form of salvation; viz., eternal life.
Han opens up the book discussing how time has fractured because there is no weight or lingering to it anymore. Its essence has become vacuous. He calls this "non-time" (un-Zeit), which is a neologism made by him. Life becomes unbearable and also accelerates because there is no weight to time to hold back acceleration. He quotes Nietzsche in Zarathustra, how men seek drugs in order to feel something until they use ever-increasing forms of drugs until they simply die. Rather, they simply cease to exist. Han states that even the concept of dying well (think Seneca and the Stoics), no longer exists. We can't die well (as Socrates exhorts us to do in his Phaedo), because we don't have philosophy to guide our way, there is no contemplation because time goads us on with every increasing acceleration. Contrary to Camus and the philosophy of the absurd, Han informs us that a life well lived is not one of sheer quantity, but rather, quality.
All Things are Full of Gods
Such is the title of David Bentley Hart's new book (which I still need to read), and Han is riding the same train here. He tells us that the ancient world is full of the divine. A cascade of divinities, demi-gods, heroes, and humans make the world a world of plenitude, full of meaning and mystery. The ancient world, he states, as also cyclical. Thus a revolution (in its original etymology) is a re-volution, a turning again. If a power structure was thrown down, soon time would correct it. Since the age of the scientific revolution (no pun intended), and the age of the Enlightenment, we have a new τέλος to work towards, a great utopia where knowledge, work, and power intertwine in a perfect harmony: Utopia. Thus, we have been increasing our acceleration century after century until we have arrived at this point. The age of optimism and post-millennialism has passed. Now, however, we are striving towards a new salvation, grasping at something that will save us in the future, having abolished any concrete goal, and cast the gods and values down to hell. Where "myth gave way to history" and gave peoples a sense of origin, identity, a "whence," we suffer from no origin, myth, or whence. Thereby we suffer from no whither, and no wherefore. We are stuck in an age of information (Not truth, knowledge, or wisdom, which are slow, and need a sense of history and time), where we whizz back to and fro. Time serves work, and when we are not working, we simply--as the expression goes--need to "kill time," or else find more of it. Oh! the irony and hypocrisy.
The Panic of Modern Life
Han then moves into some issues that plague our modern society. He talks about Heidegger's Dasein and how technology seeks increasingly to break down distance (Heidegger would later modify his view). Han's example is the letter in the mail to the E-mail. E-mail is instant. In this respect, it's not even "ready-at-hand" (Bestand, to use a term from Heidegger), it is beyond the hand. Heidegger talks about the hand later in his later philosophy. The hand on a shoulder is the moment between. The "hesitation" that breaks open space. Han, in critiquing Hannah Arendt, states that it's the constitutive part of the vita activa, otherwise it is reduced down to mere labor, in the Marxist sense. We need our hands free, not in order to be able to "work more," (RE: hands-free devices in order to optimize "time," that is to work more; German word for the cell phone is "Handy"), but in order to linger, to tarry, to Weilen as Heidegger says, to "meanwhile" (112). It's disturbing when you go outside in 2025 and every g-d damn person is running around like a fly, buzzing about, with AirPods in their ears, giant cell phone in their hand, completely disconnected. Heidegger would say that they are removed from the facticity of the world. Because we have raised ourselves up to be a new Lord, we objectify everything, including ourselves, and time breaks down.
Our society today is anxious and imperiled; jittery and rushed; frenetic and lonely. While life tells us to live faster and stack up experiences. Han states "whoever tries to live faster, will ultimately die faster" (34). With no time there is no history. In fact, Han states that without Time, both history and truth will be outmoded concepts in the very near future. He is not wrong. We are arguing about history in this country right now, even in the state I live in (Florida). Who should write the history books? Historians? Politicians? Cui bonum? Whose interpretation of history? Nietzsche's threefold distinction of history (1. Antiquarian 2. Monumental 3. Critical) is obsolete when history retains no time, thereby rendering it without interpretation. With no time, and no lingering, walking turns into marching (109). The march of progress to the beat of a battle drum is dead, however. In "point-time," as Han puts it, there is only whizzing-about, because it lacks all direction and orientation. There cannot even be, strictly speaking, acceleration, since that presupposes a destination. All there is is doing (Latin:agere), which is a shaking, or an agitation. No wonder society is merely agitated all the time.
Vita Contemplativa
Han's work culminates in the longest chapter in the book, which is on the Vita Contempletiva or the contemplative life. Han sees this as the absolutely necessary remedy to our fractured world. He doesn't think that this is going to "fix" it. Rather, this is a clarion call to those looking to find their way out of the auto-exploitation and burnout that has ground us down to a pulp. Han thinks that there are increasingly fewer and fewer "thinkers." He quotes Aristotle, who states that the gods simply contemplate and do not work, and therefore are more blessed. The theoretical life, for Aristotle, was the life of the philosopher. To theorize (Theorein, where we get our word theory), meant to contemplate (con-templum Latin, for the temple, that is a walling off of the holy from the secular). It is not idleness, however, as even God is actus purus (a la Aquinas et al.), and therefore always in a state of pure activity. This is not "work" in the Marxist sense. Han does not think that owning the means of production will make one free; pace Marx, he states that Hegel's master-slave dialectic suffers in that both master and slave are still beholden to labor and are an animal laborans. Only when we can raise ourselves up from the chains and pressures of time in service of labor, can one truly be free. This is the life of contemplation. It is interesting that Chris Anderson heralded the End of Theory (https://www.wired.com/2008/06/pb-theory), since mathematical computation can do it faster and more efficiently. Models, mathematical models, artificially intelligent mathematical models become the new theory. Given the weight and gravity of of the etymology/mythology of the word "to theorize," we could say that this is the final nail on the coffin of God. Heidegger states, "Theory...in the old sense is the beholding that watches over truth...the reverent paying heed to the unconcealment of what presences (Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology, 164-165).
Heidegger actually does pick up on the etymological weight of theorein. Han misses an opportunity to make this connection. In. his essay Science and Reflection Heidegger ties the etymology of θεωρεῖν (to contemplate) back to two root words: Θεία and ὁράω. Θεία is of course the wife of Hyperion, a goddess and one of the twelve titans, who helps overthrow their father, Ouranos (I'm reading John Keats' Hyperion right now, so it's fresh on my mind!). Heidegger connects "theia" to Plato's forms (eidos), which is tied to knowing (wissen). The Greek verb "to see" is such an interesting example, because its future, perfect, and aorist forms are all built off of a different verbal stems, although they ultimately go back to the same verbal root, ϝιδ, which means to see or know. The present tense form, however, is from a completely different verbal stem. The present tense ὁράω (the second part of Theorein, means to see, to look upon, to perceive, from PIE root wer, which means to watch, to keep, to guard over. Hence, the οὖρος (watchers/guardians) of Plato's Republic.
In Proto-Indo-European weyd means to see, from which we get the words wise, wit, and witch in English; wissen in German; οἶδα (perfect tense, to know as 'to have seen'), εἶδον (aorist tense, to see), and εἴδομαι (middle voice: to be seen-as in, to seem, to appear, used intransitively, with a dative (reflexive) or with an infinitive) in Greek. In the Greek, they are simply different aspectual forms deriving from the same root word. Thus, the stems form a different aspect, which is why we have grammatical derivatives in manifold languages that connote both seeing and knowing. We also get ἵστωρ, which means judge, one who knows [laws], and therefore a wise man. We get the English word witness from this root. Also, ἱστορία, which means inquiry, examination, a "gazing or looking into," a narration of what is seen or learned, from which we get the English word history (Latin: historia from the Greek ἱστορία). The end of time, means the end of history. One cannot gaze towards that which reveals itself as being, and weave that which has been learned into a tapestry of truth--this is history--when there is no more knowledge or wisdom. There is just that which is in a line, in a form, ready at hand: this is information--Easily accessible, instantaneous. Thus, Han rightly concludes:
"In contrast to knowledge and experience [Erfahrung] in the emphatic sense, information and experienced events [Erlebnisse] produce no lasting or deep effects. The notions of truth and knowledge, by now, sound archaic. They rest on duration. Truth must endure. But, in fact, it fades away in the face of an increasingly shorter present. And knowledge is made possible by a temporal gathering which enframes the present with past and future. Such extended time characterizes truth as well as knowledge" (41).
Conclusion
How can we get ourselves out of this mess? Han's most informative and exciting chapter was called the Paradox of the Present. His last one on the contemplative life, however, was the most hopeful. The most curious one, was the one on the Chinese fragrant clock (hsiang yin, lit. seal of fragrance). Time becomes something that measures, but it is not calculation alone, it is lingering, fragrance, scent, duration, lastingness, nostalgia, recollection, memory, etc. Han's chapter on boredom was really good, also. There is much more I want to say but...I have to go pick up my daughter, and I am out of Time
"Oh! yes! Time has reappeared; Time is sovereign ruler now…Yes, Time reigns; he has resumed his brutal tyranny. And he pokes me with his double goad as if I were an ox. ‘Then hoi, donkey! Sweat, slave! Man, be damned and live.’"
-Charles Baudelaire, The Double Room
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 1, 2020
"Bugünün zaman krizi hızlanma değil, zamanı düzenleyici bir ritmin eksikliği; atomize olan, dağılan, geçicileşen, amaçsızca dönüp duran zamanın yol açtığı hayatın hızlandığı duygusudur."
"Yaşam ve kimlikler atomize oluyor, birlikte-varoluşta radikal bir kayba uğruyoruz; insanın elinde bütün gücüyle sağlıklı tutmaya çalıştığı, küçük, önemsiz bedenden, küçük bir kimlikten başka bir şey kalmıyor, kırılgan bedenin sağlığı dünyanın ve Tanrı'nın yerini alıyor."
"(Max Weber, çalışmayı ve biriktirmeyi -kurtuluş özleminin tezahürü- Tanrı'nın buyruğu kabul eden Protestan çileciliğinin kapitalizmin ruhunu önceden şekillendirdiğini tespit eder), Eylemlilik yaşamının tartışılmazlığı, insanı 'çalışan hayvan'a indirgiyor, durma ve derin düşünme becerisini ortadan kaldırıp dünyanın ve zamanın kaybedilmesine yol açıyor; emeğin oluşturduğu bilinç ancak, kendini emek buyruğundan kurtarabilirse tamamen özgürleşebilir ve hayvani bir yaşamdan bir üst aşamaya geçilebilir(Hegel); zaman krizi, aktif hayat (viva activa) ile tefekkür (derin düşünme) (viva contemplativa) tekrar birleştiğinde (ANDANTE...tutkulu ve yavaş bir ruhun temposu-Nietzsche) aşılabilir ancak."
Hepiniz ey çetin çalışmayı ve hızlıyı, yeniyi ve yabancıyı sevenler -pek katlanamıyorsunuz kendinize; çalışkanlığınız kaçıştır, kendinizi unutma istemidir.
...Huzur eksikliğinden dolayı uygarlığımız yeni bir barbarlığa doğru gidiyor. Aktif, yani huzursuz insanlar hiçbir çağda bu kadar revaçta değildi. Dolayısıyla, tefekkür unsurunu büyük ölçüde güçlendirmek için insanlığın karakterinde zorunlu değişiklikler yapmak gerekir.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE"
"Yaşam ve kimlikler atomize oluyor, birlikte-varoluşta radikal bir kayba uğruyoruz; insanın elinde bütün gücüyle sağlıklı tutmaya çalıştığı, küçük, önemsiz bedenden, küçük bir kimlikten başka bir şey kalmıyor, kırılgan bedenin sağlığı dünyanın ve Tanrı'nın yerini alıyor."
"(Max Weber, çalışmayı ve biriktirmeyi -kurtuluş özleminin tezahürü- Tanrı'nın buyruğu kabul eden Protestan çileciliğinin kapitalizmin ruhunu önceden şekillendirdiğini tespit eder), Eylemlilik yaşamının tartışılmazlığı, insanı 'çalışan hayvan'a indirgiyor, durma ve derin düşünme becerisini ortadan kaldırıp dünyanın ve zamanın kaybedilmesine yol açıyor; emeğin oluşturduğu bilinç ancak, kendini emek buyruğundan kurtarabilirse tamamen özgürleşebilir ve hayvani bir yaşamdan bir üst aşamaya geçilebilir(Hegel); zaman krizi, aktif hayat (viva activa) ile tefekkür (derin düşünme) (viva contemplativa) tekrar birleştiğinde (ANDANTE...tutkulu ve yavaş bir ruhun temposu-Nietzsche) aşılabilir ancak."
Hepiniz ey çetin çalışmayı ve hızlıyı, yeniyi ve yabancıyı sevenler -pek katlanamıyorsunuz kendinize; çalışkanlığınız kaçıştır, kendinizi unutma istemidir.
...Huzur eksikliğinden dolayı uygarlığımız yeni bir barbarlığa doğru gidiyor. Aktif, yani huzursuz insanlar hiçbir çağda bu kadar revaçta değildi. Dolayısıyla, tefekkür unsurunu büyük ölçüde güçlendirmek için insanlığın karakterinde zorunlu değişiklikler yapmak gerekir.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE"
August 8, 2024
Este es el segundo libro que leo de Byung-Chul Han, quien en su eficiencia lingüística logra trasladar temas que suponía complejos a lectores no familiarizados (o no tanto) con la filosofía. Yo soy más bien un mal lector, aunque pretendo ir mejorando con el tiempo.
Así que un ensayo filosófico sobre el arte de demorarse, leía entre los ejemplares que saqué de la biblioteca de Filosofía y Humanidades de la Universidad de Chile, cuestión que a mi me llamó enormemente la atención. No solo porque acabo de terminar la Sociedad del cansancio (2010) y, mientras escribo esta reseña, observo perplejo las primeras páginas de la Sociedad de la transparencia (2012) abierta en mi escritorio, sino también porque recae en mi un inmenso cansancio, eterno, como si no tuviera fin ni principio. Siempre estoy agotado, todo el tiempo me siento cansado. Envidio a los que logran hacer su día, su semana, su mes, como si no estuvieran cargando con el peso de quinientos años de cansancio. Estoy cansado y siento que el tiempo se me va, se me agota como la energía que no logro administrar.
El tiempo, vaya qué cuestión extraña; incapaz de condesar mi vida.
Demorarse siempre ha sido, para mi, sinónimo del fracaso, como si lo que prima es lograr un éxito desenfrenado lo más pronto posible para demostrar a no se quién lo prodigioso que puedo ser. Y, sin embargo, a nadie -ni a mi- me interesa. El tiempo empezó a ser una cuestión difícil durante los últimos cinco año. La revuelta popular, la pandemia, mi paso exprés en la universidad, la pedagogía, todo pasó muy rápido. Sin embargo, también, pasó muy lento. Mi abuelo, quien esperaba con ansias que su nieto pueda recibirse en la universidad falleció un mes y medio antes de que egresara de literatura. Yo no me atrasé, sino que él no alcanzó a vivir lo que tanto anhelaba. Yo no me atrasé, pero siento que me demoré demasiado, que podría haberlo hecho más rápido, que le pude haber -incluso- mentido para decirle que sí, que ya me recibí y que su anhelo y felicidad pueda acompañar el término de su vida. Yo no me atrasé, solo que el tiempo pasó demasiado rápido y lo logré condensar en mi vida.
Byung-Chul Han en este ensayo titulado El aroma del tiempo (2009) nos plantea justamente que sentir que la vida se acelera no es algo exacto, sino más bien "viene de la percepción de que el tiempo da tumbos sin sentido alguno" (9). He escuchado largamente a intelectuales repetir vagamente una y otra vez la concepción gramsciana de la crisis, que lejos de hacerle justicia a uno de los más grandes pensadores de todos los tiempos me produce recelo. Siento que el tiempo da tumbos, que no tiene sentido; siento, también, que se ha acelerado; siento que vivo un presente precipitado del que se dejó de imaginar un país distinto y que, por alguna razón, rechazamos o quitamos el sentido y significado de aquel pasado reciente que nos permitía desplegar un horizonte de expectativas favorables para nuestra clase. Vivo, en pocas palabras, en un presente sin demora, agresivo, de la que solo quiero escapar.
El escape del tiempo, la dispersión, la gran fuga.
El tiempo y el espacio ha sido para mi un tema de relevancia en los últimos años, incluso sobre aquello realicé mi tesis de licenciatura; justo en el momento que el tiempo se fugaba de mi abuelo o él del espacio y yo me quedaba aquí aferrado a la desolación.
Para Nietzsche «el último hombre» alarga sucesivamente su vida con rigurosas políticas de salud; «la gran salud» es el presupuesto fisiológico del superhombre, pero paradojalmente aunque se alargue la vida esta igual se acaba. En este sentido, morir es una forma de fin, pero no hay fin en el tiempo lineal y, por tanto, no hay tiempo de morir pues simplemente la vida acaba, o "ex-pira a destiempo en lugar de morir" (13).
¿Qué ocurre, por lo tanto, en el tiempo de nuestra sociedad contemporánea si la muerte -que es una forma de fin- no es aceptada, pues siempre llega a destiempo, mientras que sentimos que el tiempo -«atomizado»- se nos fuga inconmensurablemente rápido?
Bajo la premisa de «quien vive el doble de rápido puede disfrutar en la vida del doble de opciones» (25), Han plantea que vivimos en un tiempo «atomizado» donde todos los momentos son iguales entre sí, pues la vida "es un presente que se sucede sin rumbo" (16), como un animal desbocado. Tal como nunca es tiempo de morir, sino que perecemos o acabamos -a destiempo-, la vida también carece de toda forma y sentido (14).
El tiempo, para Han, requiere de una continuidad narrativa que de significación y sentido. Reconoce que el mundo mítico "está lleno de significado" (29), y que la narración, por tanto creadora de mundo, permite que el orden (cosmos) prime en su lugar. El orden es justicia, dirá Han, pues "los acontecimientos mantienen una estrecha relación, un encadenamiento lleno de sentido" (29). Es un tiempo condensable, eterno, repetitivo, conocido y reconocido. El mundo histórico, por su parte, es distinto, no es una imagen acabada e inmutable, sino más bien una línea que se traza ininterrumpidamente, y es justamente su linealidad de acontecimiento que progresan hacia una meta lo que le otorga sentido. Sin embargo, si esta continuidad narrativa se pierde, se acaba el mundo mítico, se acaba la historia, y queda solo la información vacía donde no se produce sensación alguna. Es, por lo tanto, un tiempo sin aroma: "cuando se despoja de cualquier estructura de sentido, de profundidad, cuando se atomiza o se aplana, se enflaquece o se acorta" (38).
Baudrillard, por su parte, plantea que la aceleración de la historia ha dejado que las cosas salgan expulsadas de su "esfera referencial" (40), "por lo tanto, la historia o la producción de sentido son resultado de una determinada velocidad del proceso de intercambio" (43). En la Sociedad del cansancio (2010), Han problematiza lo elaborado por Arendt En la condición humana (1958) y como la modernidad pretendió potenciar las capacidades humanas y, sin embargo aquello, terminó en una "mortal pasividad". En este caso, la aceleración -plantea Bauman- como un fenómeno moderno provoca consecuentemente una desnarrativización posmoderna -plantea H. Rosa-que "únicamente responde a una aceleración forzada de los procesos vitales y productivos. Pero en realidad, por el contrario, es la falta de gravitación temporal lo que provoca el desequilibrio de la vida". (56).
Esto nos lleva a la paradoja del presente, como un tiempo acelerado y discontinuo, pero más cercano a un tiempo-ahora (jetz-Zeit) característico de la red en que vamos de un link a otro (64), como uno dentro del otro, simultáneamente. La paradoja, explica Han, consiste "en que todo es un presente simultáneo, todo tiene la posibilidad, o debe tenerla, de ser ahora" (66). Y esta inmediatez de acontecimiento pierde la sustancia de un tiempo aromático, donde el aroma "impregnado de imágenes e historia, devuelve la estabilidad a un yo amenazado por la disociación" (72)
En la última parte del libro reflexiona sobre la «vita activa» y «vita contemplativa», dialogando con Hegel, Marx, Kojéve, Heidegger y Arendt, aborda la función del trabajo, la vida y el tiempo, temas que recoge y desarrolla de muy buena manera en la Sociedad del cansancio (2010).
Este libro es una excelente puerta de entrada a la complejidad filosófica del problema de la existencia humana contemporánea y nos permite hacer visible aquello que desaparece en nuestro tiempo-ahora simultáneo.
"La «vita contemplativa» sin acción está ciega. La «vita activa» sin contemplación está vacía" (160)
Así que un ensayo filosófico sobre el arte de demorarse, leía entre los ejemplares que saqué de la biblioteca de Filosofía y Humanidades de la Universidad de Chile, cuestión que a mi me llamó enormemente la atención. No solo porque acabo de terminar la Sociedad del cansancio (2010) y, mientras escribo esta reseña, observo perplejo las primeras páginas de la Sociedad de la transparencia (2012) abierta en mi escritorio, sino también porque recae en mi un inmenso cansancio, eterno, como si no tuviera fin ni principio. Siempre estoy agotado, todo el tiempo me siento cansado. Envidio a los que logran hacer su día, su semana, su mes, como si no estuvieran cargando con el peso de quinientos años de cansancio. Estoy cansado y siento que el tiempo se me va, se me agota como la energía que no logro administrar.
El tiempo, vaya qué cuestión extraña; incapaz de condesar mi vida.
Demorarse siempre ha sido, para mi, sinónimo del fracaso, como si lo que prima es lograr un éxito desenfrenado lo más pronto posible para demostrar a no se quién lo prodigioso que puedo ser. Y, sin embargo, a nadie -ni a mi- me interesa. El tiempo empezó a ser una cuestión difícil durante los últimos cinco año. La revuelta popular, la pandemia, mi paso exprés en la universidad, la pedagogía, todo pasó muy rápido. Sin embargo, también, pasó muy lento. Mi abuelo, quien esperaba con ansias que su nieto pueda recibirse en la universidad falleció un mes y medio antes de que egresara de literatura. Yo no me atrasé, sino que él no alcanzó a vivir lo que tanto anhelaba. Yo no me atrasé, pero siento que me demoré demasiado, que podría haberlo hecho más rápido, que le pude haber -incluso- mentido para decirle que sí, que ya me recibí y que su anhelo y felicidad pueda acompañar el término de su vida. Yo no me atrasé, solo que el tiempo pasó demasiado rápido y lo logré condensar en mi vida.
Byung-Chul Han en este ensayo titulado El aroma del tiempo (2009) nos plantea justamente que sentir que la vida se acelera no es algo exacto, sino más bien "viene de la percepción de que el tiempo da tumbos sin sentido alguno" (9). He escuchado largamente a intelectuales repetir vagamente una y otra vez la concepción gramsciana de la crisis, que lejos de hacerle justicia a uno de los más grandes pensadores de todos los tiempos me produce recelo. Siento que el tiempo da tumbos, que no tiene sentido; siento, también, que se ha acelerado; siento que vivo un presente precipitado del que se dejó de imaginar un país distinto y que, por alguna razón, rechazamos o quitamos el sentido y significado de aquel pasado reciente que nos permitía desplegar un horizonte de expectativas favorables para nuestra clase. Vivo, en pocas palabras, en un presente sin demora, agresivo, de la que solo quiero escapar.
El escape del tiempo, la dispersión, la gran fuga.
El tiempo y el espacio ha sido para mi un tema de relevancia en los últimos años, incluso sobre aquello realicé mi tesis de licenciatura; justo en el momento que el tiempo se fugaba de mi abuelo o él del espacio y yo me quedaba aquí aferrado a la desolación.
Para Nietzsche «el último hombre» alarga sucesivamente su vida con rigurosas políticas de salud; «la gran salud» es el presupuesto fisiológico del superhombre, pero paradojalmente aunque se alargue la vida esta igual se acaba. En este sentido, morir es una forma de fin, pero no hay fin en el tiempo lineal y, por tanto, no hay tiempo de morir pues simplemente la vida acaba, o "ex-pira a destiempo en lugar de morir" (13).
¿Qué ocurre, por lo tanto, en el tiempo de nuestra sociedad contemporánea si la muerte -que es una forma de fin- no es aceptada, pues siempre llega a destiempo, mientras que sentimos que el tiempo -«atomizado»- se nos fuga inconmensurablemente rápido?
Bajo la premisa de «quien vive el doble de rápido puede disfrutar en la vida del doble de opciones» (25), Han plantea que vivimos en un tiempo «atomizado» donde todos los momentos son iguales entre sí, pues la vida "es un presente que se sucede sin rumbo" (16), como un animal desbocado. Tal como nunca es tiempo de morir, sino que perecemos o acabamos -a destiempo-, la vida también carece de toda forma y sentido (14).
El tiempo, para Han, requiere de una continuidad narrativa que de significación y sentido. Reconoce que el mundo mítico "está lleno de significado" (29), y que la narración, por tanto creadora de mundo, permite que el orden (cosmos) prime en su lugar. El orden es justicia, dirá Han, pues "los acontecimientos mantienen una estrecha relación, un encadenamiento lleno de sentido" (29). Es un tiempo condensable, eterno, repetitivo, conocido y reconocido. El mundo histórico, por su parte, es distinto, no es una imagen acabada e inmutable, sino más bien una línea que se traza ininterrumpidamente, y es justamente su linealidad de acontecimiento que progresan hacia una meta lo que le otorga sentido. Sin embargo, si esta continuidad narrativa se pierde, se acaba el mundo mítico, se acaba la historia, y queda solo la información vacía donde no se produce sensación alguna. Es, por lo tanto, un tiempo sin aroma: "cuando se despoja de cualquier estructura de sentido, de profundidad, cuando se atomiza o se aplana, se enflaquece o se acorta" (38).
Baudrillard, por su parte, plantea que la aceleración de la historia ha dejado que las cosas salgan expulsadas de su "esfera referencial" (40), "por lo tanto, la historia o la producción de sentido son resultado de una determinada velocidad del proceso de intercambio" (43). En la Sociedad del cansancio (2010), Han problematiza lo elaborado por Arendt En la condición humana (1958) y como la modernidad pretendió potenciar las capacidades humanas y, sin embargo aquello, terminó en una "mortal pasividad". En este caso, la aceleración -plantea Bauman- como un fenómeno moderno provoca consecuentemente una desnarrativización posmoderna -plantea H. Rosa-que "únicamente responde a una aceleración forzada de los procesos vitales y productivos. Pero en realidad, por el contrario, es la falta de gravitación temporal lo que provoca el desequilibrio de la vida". (56).
Esto nos lleva a la paradoja del presente, como un tiempo acelerado y discontinuo, pero más cercano a un tiempo-ahora (jetz-Zeit) característico de la red en que vamos de un link a otro (64), como uno dentro del otro, simultáneamente. La paradoja, explica Han, consiste "en que todo es un presente simultáneo, todo tiene la posibilidad, o debe tenerla, de ser ahora" (66). Y esta inmediatez de acontecimiento pierde la sustancia de un tiempo aromático, donde el aroma "impregnado de imágenes e historia, devuelve la estabilidad a un yo amenazado por la disociación" (72)
En la última parte del libro reflexiona sobre la «vita activa» y «vita contemplativa», dialogando con Hegel, Marx, Kojéve, Heidegger y Arendt, aborda la función del trabajo, la vida y el tiempo, temas que recoge y desarrolla de muy buena manera en la Sociedad del cansancio (2010).
Este libro es una excelente puerta de entrada a la complejidad filosófica del problema de la existencia humana contemporánea y nos permite hacer visible aquello que desaparece en nuestro tiempo-ahora simultáneo.
"La «vita contemplativa» sin acción está ciega. La «vita activa» sin contemplación está vacía" (160)
August 9, 2024
In this age of haste, time has lost its ground. Hyper-capitalization, hyper-secularization, and hyper-acceleration all contributed to the diffusion of time. Han calls it dyschronicity - time is lacking rhythm. Somehow, with the atomization of society followed the atomization of time. Time floats around as points.
Since the secularization and modernization of society, the humans have more freedom to do with their time whatever they like, whenever. Before, every Sunday dictated we go to church, every weekday from 9-5 dictated we work. God used to function like a stabilizer of time, but we've killed God in our 20th & 21st century. We humans need some kind of anchor to the flow of time. People nowadays rarely go to church, and they choose their own working hours, many working remotely during the hours of their choosing. Nothing to anchor us to the rhythm of the time, all dispersed, hence dyschronicity.
The title (The Scent of Time) seems to be the reference to Proust's novel "In Search of Lost Time." Han finds numerous similarities between Proust's novel "Time Regained" and Heidegger's "Being and Time."
"Proust's strategy of duration releases the scent of time. It presupposes an historical existence; it presupposes that one has a curriculum vitae. Its scent is a scent of immanence."
Time, for most people, manifest in a linear fashion. This is bad in itself, and it heads towards some goals without an anchor, accelerates toward a goal. Before the death of God, time is likely a circular manifestation. However, worse yet has happened, worse than linear; now, time manifests as a set of points randomly dispersed. It even lacks the direction now. The ideal manifestation of a time, Han seems to suggest, should be none other than a static picture. That resides in Being, immanently, as something that fuses being. Being as the anchor to time, the picture, never changing, as the time that exists within oneself.
Han discusses in depth the ideas of Lyotard, Heidegger, Arendt (very critical of her prioritizing of vita activa), and Nietzsche (who said: Active men are usually lacking in higher activity - I mean individual activity. They are active as officials, businessmen, scholars, that is, as generic beings, but not as quite particular, single and unique men. In this respect they are lazy... Active people roll like a stone, conforming to the stupidity of mechanics), along with many others. Han analyzes and critiques their interpretation of time during the epoch of modern- and postmodern dismissal of narrative and meaning.
Path is just as important as the place it leads to. The duration, the threshold, the interval... all purged of any importance now, mere obstacles to the goals.
---------------------------------------------------
Beauty is owed to duration, to a contemplative synopsis. It is not a momentous brilliance or attraction, but an afterglow, a phosphorescence of things.
The good time is accessible for a mind that has emptied itself of all things 'useless.' It is particularly the emptiness of mind, freeing it from desire, which deepens time.
'Essential existence is slow'
The inability to linger in contemplation.
The importance of duration.
P. 64:
Being and Time is based on an insight that is specific to its time, that the loss of historical meaningfulness leads to the decay of time into an accelerating sequence of isolated events, that because of a lack of gravitation or an anchoring in meaning time rushes off without hold or aim. Heidegger's strategy regarding time consists in a re-anchoring of time; in giving it significance, a new hold; in enframing it again within a historical line, so that it does not disperse into a meaningless, accelerating succession of events.... The historical traction now originates from the emphasis on the self. Heidegger concentrates time by integrating the temporal horizons by way of their relation to the self. History as directed time protects time against decay.....
Heidegger's 'meaning' is a-teleological, even non-perspectival. It is not dominated by a goal or purpose that needs to be realized. It is without direction. It is not structured in a narrative or linear fashion.
Heidegger's thought turns against the historical shift from repetition and reproduction towards manufacture and production, from thrownness and facticity towards freedom and self-affirmation.
To be free does not simply mean to be un-tied or un-committed. It is not the 'release from' something or dis-embeddedness which makes us free, but inclusion and embeddedness. The total lack of relationships causes anxiousness and worry. The Indo-European root "fri," from which terms such as "free," "peace" or "quietude" [Friede], and "friend" are derived, means "to love." Thus, "free" originally meant "pertaining to friends or loved ones." One feels free in relationships of love and friendship. It is not the absence of ties, but ties themselves which set us free. Freedom is a word which pertains to relations par excellence. Without hold there is no freedom.
Since the secularization and modernization of society, the humans have more freedom to do with their time whatever they like, whenever. Before, every Sunday dictated we go to church, every weekday from 9-5 dictated we work. God used to function like a stabilizer of time, but we've killed God in our 20th & 21st century. We humans need some kind of anchor to the flow of time. People nowadays rarely go to church, and they choose their own working hours, many working remotely during the hours of their choosing. Nothing to anchor us to the rhythm of the time, all dispersed, hence dyschronicity.
The title (The Scent of Time) seems to be the reference to Proust's novel "In Search of Lost Time." Han finds numerous similarities between Proust's novel "Time Regained" and Heidegger's "Being and Time."
"Proust's strategy of duration releases the scent of time. It presupposes an historical existence; it presupposes that one has a curriculum vitae. Its scent is a scent of immanence."
Time, for most people, manifest in a linear fashion. This is bad in itself, and it heads towards some goals without an anchor, accelerates toward a goal. Before the death of God, time is likely a circular manifestation. However, worse yet has happened, worse than linear; now, time manifests as a set of points randomly dispersed. It even lacks the direction now. The ideal manifestation of a time, Han seems to suggest, should be none other than a static picture. That resides in Being, immanently, as something that fuses being. Being as the anchor to time, the picture, never changing, as the time that exists within oneself.
Han discusses in depth the ideas of Lyotard, Heidegger, Arendt (very critical of her prioritizing of vita activa), and Nietzsche (who said: Active men are usually lacking in higher activity - I mean individual activity. They are active as officials, businessmen, scholars, that is, as generic beings, but not as quite particular, single and unique men. In this respect they are lazy... Active people roll like a stone, conforming to the stupidity of mechanics), along with many others. Han analyzes and critiques their interpretation of time during the epoch of modern- and postmodern dismissal of narrative and meaning.
Path is just as important as the place it leads to. The duration, the threshold, the interval... all purged of any importance now, mere obstacles to the goals.
---------------------------------------------------
Beauty is owed to duration, to a contemplative synopsis. It is not a momentous brilliance or attraction, but an afterglow, a phosphorescence of things.
The good time is accessible for a mind that has emptied itself of all things 'useless.' It is particularly the emptiness of mind, freeing it from desire, which deepens time.
'Essential existence is slow'
The inability to linger in contemplation.
The importance of duration.
P. 64:
Being and Time is based on an insight that is specific to its time, that the loss of historical meaningfulness leads to the decay of time into an accelerating sequence of isolated events, that because of a lack of gravitation or an anchoring in meaning time rushes off without hold or aim. Heidegger's strategy regarding time consists in a re-anchoring of time; in giving it significance, a new hold; in enframing it again within a historical line, so that it does not disperse into a meaningless, accelerating succession of events.... The historical traction now originates from the emphasis on the self. Heidegger concentrates time by integrating the temporal horizons by way of their relation to the self. History as directed time protects time against decay.....
Heidegger's 'meaning' is a-teleological, even non-perspectival. It is not dominated by a goal or purpose that needs to be realized. It is without direction. It is not structured in a narrative or linear fashion.
Heidegger's thought turns against the historical shift from repetition and reproduction towards manufacture and production, from thrownness and facticity towards freedom and self-affirmation.
To be free does not simply mean to be un-tied or un-committed. It is not the 'release from' something or dis-embeddedness which makes us free, but inclusion and embeddedness. The total lack of relationships causes anxiousness and worry. The Indo-European root "fri," from which terms such as "free," "peace" or "quietude" [Friede], and "friend" are derived, means "to love." Thus, "free" originally meant "pertaining to friends or loved ones." One feels free in relationships of love and friendship. It is not the absence of ties, but ties themselves which set us free. Freedom is a word which pertains to relations par excellence. Without hold there is no freedom.
August 21, 2015
Me interesa mucho el tema del tiempo, no sólo desde el punto de vista literario o fantástico. La filosofía puede aportar puntos de vista complejos y amplios y por eso he acudido a uno de los pensadores de moda, del que no había leído nada. Sus libros tienen fama de breves y directos y éste lo es al menos en su primera parte, cuando Byung-Chul Han parece denunciar no tanto la aceleración de la vida, sino su vaciado de dirección y contenidos debido a la caída de los grandes relatos religiosos o políticos. Hasta ahí alto y claro, aunque sin mucha exposición de alternativas como no sea una vuelta a estos donadores de sentido. En la segunda parece que quiere justificarse y para ello acude a una amplia glosa de Heidegger principalmente, interesante de por sí para entender las dificultades del filósofo alemán, pero poca cosa en cuanto a aportación de algo nuevo.
October 28, 2021
Rewarding and provocative -- gives voice to a feeling I have found difficult to give voice to. This book is slightly dense - I abandoned it once - but thankfully I came back. For a writer who broadly references German philosophy, he does a good job of making the ideas accessible for someone who hasn't done the background reading.
A core idea that will stick with me is the tension between the need to democratize work (a core Marxist & socialist goal) with the need to rise above the enslavement to our work. His critique of Marx and his singular view of humanity as first and foremost laborers is quite compelling, partially explanatory of the decline of the left, and a point that should shape organizing efforts today.
A contemporary example - what is the origin of today's of workforce burnout and withdrawal trend? It could represent a growing revolt against exploitive firm structures and culture, a growing consciousness of the emptiness firm wage work, and desire to open more of life outside of labor to fulfill our humanity. On the flip side, it could also represent a desire to embrace a more nurturing firm structure & culture, more totally submit ourselves to the paternal care of a firm, and more fully fill up time oscillating between compulsive work / passive consumption.
The difference between visions is stark, and yet I believe the book is yet to be written on this trend. Those leading labor organizing efforts have a the potential to steer the movement towards the former - a contemplative, fully human vision of our relationship with work. Conversely, I know that firm executives also see this as an opportunity to more fully enact their vision of the firm as the totalizing enclosure in which we play out the entirety of our laboring, spiritual, community, and contemplative lives. Unless we find a unity in this tension -- between the need to reform work and free ourselves the compulsion to work -- the executives will be successful.
A core idea that will stick with me is the tension between the need to democratize work (a core Marxist & socialist goal) with the need to rise above the enslavement to our work. His critique of Marx and his singular view of humanity as first and foremost laborers is quite compelling, partially explanatory of the decline of the left, and a point that should shape organizing efforts today.
A contemporary example - what is the origin of today's of workforce burnout and withdrawal trend? It could represent a growing revolt against exploitive firm structures and culture, a growing consciousness of the emptiness firm wage work, and desire to open more of life outside of labor to fulfill our humanity. On the flip side, it could also represent a desire to embrace a more nurturing firm structure & culture, more totally submit ourselves to the paternal care of a firm, and more fully fill up time oscillating between compulsive work / passive consumption.
The difference between visions is stark, and yet I believe the book is yet to be written on this trend. Those leading labor organizing efforts have a the potential to steer the movement towards the former - a contemplative, fully human vision of our relationship with work. Conversely, I know that firm executives also see this as an opportunity to more fully enact their vision of the firm as the totalizing enclosure in which we play out the entirety of our laboring, spiritual, community, and contemplative lives. Unless we find a unity in this tension -- between the need to reform work and free ourselves the compulsion to work -- the executives will be successful.
January 20, 2021
Como todo tratado filosófico, este no deja de tener la complejidad en cuanto a conocimiento previo. Específicamente es necesario entender a grandes rasgos el pensamiento de Heidegger y su dasein (Yo al menos no lo conocía y tuve que leer algo de eso para hacerme una idea).
En cuanto al tema en si del degustar el tiempo, este es novedoso y entrega un diagnostico de cómo el tiempo se escurre y desaprovecha por la cantidad de opciones disponibles que actualmente tenemos como sociedad, y al tratar de dar atención a todas ellas. Distinto es filtrar esas opciones y dar la duración necesaria a cada actividad que elijamos proseguir.
Otro planteamiento que puede observarse en el libro es cómo se afronta la vida en cuanto al uso de tiempo. Acá se exponen los conceptos de vida activa (Cualquier tipo de trabajo) y vida contemplativa (Creo que equivale al filosofar) y como en esta última la duración es necesaria para llevarla a cabo.
A pesar de que me gustó el libro y amerita una relectura, las tres estrellas son porque a veces se tornan repetitivas las ideas, quizás con el fin de aclararlas, pero puede que no sea necesario.
En cuanto al tema en si del degustar el tiempo, este es novedoso y entrega un diagnostico de cómo el tiempo se escurre y desaprovecha por la cantidad de opciones disponibles que actualmente tenemos como sociedad, y al tratar de dar atención a todas ellas. Distinto es filtrar esas opciones y dar la duración necesaria a cada actividad que elijamos proseguir.
Otro planteamiento que puede observarse en el libro es cómo se afronta la vida en cuanto al uso de tiempo. Acá se exponen los conceptos de vida activa (Cualquier tipo de trabajo) y vida contemplativa (Creo que equivale al filosofar) y como en esta última la duración es necesaria para llevarla a cabo.
A pesar de que me gustó el libro y amerita una relectura, las tres estrellas son porque a veces se tornan repetitivas las ideas, quizás con el fin de aclararlas, pero puede que no sea necesario.
January 22, 2024
What can I say it took me almost a year to finish this book. Not for lack of interest but because I wanted to linger on it - in the spirit of the book itself. Had to really mull some parts over to fully grasp the message. Overall, I think it’s truly one to commit to. The vida contemplativa. A way of being that requires a level of luxury and privilege to attend to. Struggling now to apply this under the constraints of a 9-5. One part I found helpful was when the author pointed out that rests/breaks between/after work are constructed to restore the human and prepare them to work again. I think now, for my life personally, I can subvert this. But more to come on overall application of this philosophy.
Cool to read The Passion According to GH at the same time which similarly discusses the neutrality of time/the absence of future which reorients how we perceive the now. Time no longer seen as linear but circular - past present future all at once.
Cool to read The Passion According to GH at the same time which similarly discusses the neutrality of time/the absence of future which reorients how we perceive the now. Time no longer seen as linear but circular - past present future all at once.
March 28, 2021
Yürüme genel olarak üzerine düşündüğüm ve okuduğum bir eylem. Kitapçıda dolanırken de bu kitabın içindeki "Uygun Adım Yürüme Çağından Dolanıp Durma Çağına" başlıklı denemeye gözüm takıldı. Yürüme ve zaman ilişkisi hemen ilgimi çekti ve kitabı aldım. Ama bir hayalkırıklığı olarak kitap şurada ve burada parlayan aforizmalardan ibaret neredeyse. Üstte belirttiğim deneme ve boş zaman üzerine yazılmış olan en sondaki Vita Contemplativa isimli deneme dışında diğer yazılarla pek bağ kuramadım. Dediğim gibi arada "hımmm" falan dediğim cümleler oldu en fazla. Bu da bana yetmedi. Dolayısıyla vaaz ve aforizma ile aram iyi olmadığı için kitap bana pek hitap etmedi diyebilirim.
February 16, 2018
Tem alguns bons pontos aqui sobre a suposta "aceleração do tempo" (mas que eu já havia lido no Richard Sennett e no 24/7: Capitalismo Tardio e os Fins do Sono), o resto me soou como um blablablá.
November 1, 2020
Zamanın Kokusu, özünde, insanın yaşam süreçlerini sekteye uğratan hız, her şeyi yapma çabası ve tüm bunların sonunda anlamı kaybetmesi üzerine denemelerden oluşuyor. Byung-Chul Han’ın dili bir felsefi metne göre oldukça akıcı ancak metin satırlar üzerinde durma, düşünme ve anlamak/sindirmek için zaman istiyor. Bir nevi kitabı okuma süreci, kitabın anlattığı anlam çabasını gerçekleştiriyor.
September 21, 2021
Me he sentido muy tonto leyendo este libro. Y el autor me parece un prepotente. Les pido perdón a los traductores y editores por su trabajo en este ensayo.
April 6, 2022
The last chapter, chapter 12, is worth your reading time. The preceding 11 chapters were a disappointing struggle.
February 19, 2025
Your precious and fragrant time can be better savoured elsewhere. The Scent of Time too often exemplifies people’s worst caricatures of philosophy.
“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen”. The Scent of Time demonstrates Han’s inadvertent mastery at inducing this feeling in the audience through language. You certainly gain an intuitive sense for what he means by ‘temporal dislocation’ after reading pages upon pages in this seemingly-short book dedicated to saying nothing at all. Perhaps Han should be congratulated on his marvellous illustration of the notion of cyclical history (or ‘revolutionary’ history, in its original sense) through extremely repetitious paragraphs.
The most receptive audience will be two-bit artists looking for contextless but impressive-sounding quotes to shoehorn into their next project. For most, it will suffice to just read the Preface, Chapter 1, and Chapter 12 alone. Together these make a decent essay that almost does live up to the promise of the blurb. Chapters 2 through 11 do little more than inflate the price of the book.
The ‘engagement’ with canonical figures is generally facile, consisting of little more than choice passages from source texts followed by either aimless chin-scratching, or basic contradiction (i.e. just saying “nuh uh, you got it wrong”). Unfortunately, Han alone can hardly be blamed for this lamentably popular style of ‘philosophy’, even though he seems intent on capitalising on its popularity.
As a whole, the text has remarkably little structure and seems to lack any sort of methodology other than the aforementioned, half-arsed ‘critique’, which never satisfyingly gets synthesised and carried forward into a formidable argument. The middle of the book essentially devolves into a series of conjectures and platitudes, which might’ve made for something pleasingly distracting if the value of these thought-bubbles was not greatly eclipsed by the difficulty of parsing them… and if one wasn’t otherwise able to practice the vita contemplativa with the aid of far more worthwhile texts.
This combination of vacuousness and repetitiousness is truly tiring; at points I was left wondering if Han had simply compiled numerous drafts of Chapter 12 into a book, and pretended that one flowed into another. But it seems equally plausible that concision is simply not one of his stylistic or intellectual values (why should we be concise when we ought to be lingering?).
To be clear, The Scent of Time is not a long book — but it is overlong; longer than it needs to be to get its point across. If ‘malingering’ wasn’t already a word, it would be perfect for describing the action of bad smells that hang around for too long - and therefore would be a pretty apt descriptor for The Scent of Time.
“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen”. The Scent of Time demonstrates Han’s inadvertent mastery at inducing this feeling in the audience through language. You certainly gain an intuitive sense for what he means by ‘temporal dislocation’ after reading pages upon pages in this seemingly-short book dedicated to saying nothing at all. Perhaps Han should be congratulated on his marvellous illustration of the notion of cyclical history (or ‘revolutionary’ history, in its original sense) through extremely repetitious paragraphs.
The most receptive audience will be two-bit artists looking for contextless but impressive-sounding quotes to shoehorn into their next project. For most, it will suffice to just read the Preface, Chapter 1, and Chapter 12 alone. Together these make a decent essay that almost does live up to the promise of the blurb. Chapters 2 through 11 do little more than inflate the price of the book.
The ‘engagement’ with canonical figures is generally facile, consisting of little more than choice passages from source texts followed by either aimless chin-scratching, or basic contradiction (i.e. just saying “nuh uh, you got it wrong”). Unfortunately, Han alone can hardly be blamed for this lamentably popular style of ‘philosophy’, even though he seems intent on capitalising on its popularity.
As a whole, the text has remarkably little structure and seems to lack any sort of methodology other than the aforementioned, half-arsed ‘critique’, which never satisfyingly gets synthesised and carried forward into a formidable argument. The middle of the book essentially devolves into a series of conjectures and platitudes, which might’ve made for something pleasingly distracting if the value of these thought-bubbles was not greatly eclipsed by the difficulty of parsing them… and if one wasn’t otherwise able to practice the vita contemplativa with the aid of far more worthwhile texts.
This combination of vacuousness and repetitiousness is truly tiring; at points I was left wondering if Han had simply compiled numerous drafts of Chapter 12 into a book, and pretended that one flowed into another. But it seems equally plausible that concision is simply not one of his stylistic or intellectual values (why should we be concise when we ought to be lingering?).
To be clear, The Scent of Time is not a long book — but it is overlong; longer than it needs to be to get its point across. If ‘malingering’ wasn’t already a word, it would be perfect for describing the action of bad smells that hang around for too long - and therefore would be a pretty apt descriptor for The Scent of Time.
Read
April 4, 2025Lovely thoughts captured here. I found the exploration of Proust particularly rich—especially the idea that scent can ground a person in time and place. Also some really beautiful ideas about aesthetics; I’d have liked to see some additional exploration of art, time, and place. Museums as place would likely be a rich example to unpack here.
My only criticism is that the ending felt rather abrupt; the ideas linger pleasantly and I liked the meandering, contemplative nature of the writing, so a more gradual release at the end might have felt more fitting.
Lovely read. Will be pondering these ideas for some time to come—especially in terms of my relationship with technology and time for reflection built into each day…
My only criticism is that the ending felt rather abrupt; the ideas linger pleasantly and I liked the meandering, contemplative nature of the writing, so a more gradual release at the end might have felt more fitting.
Lovely read. Will be pondering these ideas for some time to come—especially in terms of my relationship with technology and time for reflection built into each day…
July 23, 2020
“Koku ağır kanlıdır. Bu haliyle, medya açısından acelecilik çağına uygun değildir. Kokular imgeler gibi hızla art arda dizilemez. İmgelerden farklı olarak, hızlandırılamazlar da.”
Bu yüzdendir ki; derin düşünme hasletinin yerini alan hiperaktif hareketliliğimizle zamanın kokusunu, tadını duyumsayamıyoruz. Tefekkürden, anın farkındalığından yoksun bu yaşamı içim almıyor artık. Böyle kitaplar da beni silkeleyip bırakıyor iyi mi! Hadi şimdi dön rutin tempona dönebilirsen!
Bu yüzdendir ki; derin düşünme hasletinin yerini alan hiperaktif hareketliliğimizle zamanın kokusunu, tadını duyumsayamıyoruz. Tefekkürden, anın farkındalığından yoksun bu yaşamı içim almıyor artık. Böyle kitaplar da beni silkeleyip bırakıyor iyi mi! Hadi şimdi dön rutin tempona dönebilirsen!
April 23, 2022
Bazı yerler sanki bilinç akışı gibi yazılmış. Önceki cümleyle bağlayamadığım yerler oldu. Bu yüzden zor akıyor. Fikirleri daha iyi anlamak için referansları da okumak gerekiyor. Alıntıları yeterli bulmadım. Özellikle Marcel Proust, Heidegger, Hegel, Aristotales, Marx sıkça geçiyor. Ön hazırlık gerekebilir biraz.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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