This is a book that demands a little thought from the reader, but the writer carefully sets up his idea, with each section drawing us further on. Han starts most parts by looking at other thinkers’ ideas, but he’s certainly not afraid to contradict them. A good example is his examination of Hannah Arendt’s claims that we’ve given up our individualism and become cogs in the machine, leading to a society too jaded and exhausted to think. Han’s counter-claim is that we’re too full of ego; it’s the dual role mentioned above, that of being our own boss and underling simultaneously, that has us frazzled. The Burnout Society starts with a fact: since the end of the Cold War, with the definitive fall of geographical barriers, the concept of diversity has changed into the concept of difference. Today’s individual is positive, in the sense that he accepts everything that is alien to him: what used to be a not-I is now another possible I. Thus that essential negativity, which for German philosopher Hegel is the presupposition of existence, is missing. This remarkable openness is at the basis of the unlimited neoliberal freedom, amplified by the digital revolution. The new Human-type, helplessly exposed to the excess of Positivity, is deprived of any sense of agency. The depressive person is this animal laborans (working animal) that exploits itself, voluntarily, without coercion. They are both culprit and victim. Secular, 21st-century residents of wealthy countries don’t worry much about whether we’re God’s elect. But we’re still trapped in the Calvinist cage. We are anxious to demonstrate to potential employers, and to ourselves, that we are work saints. Like divine election, this type of status is an abstract condition that we cannot assign to ourselves, but one we hope others will recognize. Han writes: “the society of achievement and activeness is generating excessive tiredness and exhaustion.”

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I might just end there – you see, after all that philosophising, I’m suddenly feeling very, very tired … Heidegger’s thinking also displays immunological traits. Thus, he decidedly rejects the Identical, to which he opposes the Same. In contrast to the Identical, the Same possesses interiority, which is the basis for every immunoreaction. Harm does not come from negativity alone, but also from positivity—not just from the Other or the foreign, but also from the Same. Such violence of positivity is clearly what Baudrillard has in mind when he writes, “He who lives by the Same shall die by the Same.” 4 Likewise, Baudrillard speaks of the “obesity of all current systems” of information, communication, and production. Fat does not provoke an immune reaction. However—and herein lies the weakness of his theory—Baudrillard pictures the totalitarianism of the Same from an immunological standpoint: The Expulsion of the Other: Society, Perception and Communication Today (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2018) ISBN 1509523065 Brazilian Portuguese edition: Capitalismo e impulso de morte, Vozes, Petrópolis, 2021 ISBN 9786557131282.Spanish edition: La sociedad de la transparencia. Barcelona, Herder Editorial, 2013, ISBN 9788425432521. What is uncanny about Covid-19 is that those who catch it suffer from extreme tiredness and fatigue. The illness seems to simulate fundamental tiredness. And there are more and more reports of patients who have recovered but are continuing to suffer severe long-term symptoms, one of which is “chronic fatigue syndrome.” The expression “the batteries no longer charge” describes it very well. Those affected are no longer able to work and perform. They have to exert themselves just to pour a glass of water. When walking, they have to make frequent stops to catch their breath. They feel like the living dead. One patient reports: “It actually feels as if the mobile were only 4 percent charged, and you really only have 4 percent for the whole day, and it cannot be recharged.” Psychopolitik: Neoliberalismus und die neuen Machttechniken (Essay Collection). S. Fischer Verlag Frankfurt 2014 ISBN 978-3100022035.

Depression began its ascent when the disciplinary model for behaviors, the rules of authority and observance of taboos that gave social classes as well as both sexes a specific destiny, broke against norms that invited us to undertake personal initiative by enjoining us to be ourselves. . . . The depressed individual is unable to measure up; he is tired of having to become himself.1 The problem is that “The ‘I can’t do it anymore’ leads to a destructive self-reproach and self-aggression”. When we realize that we can not achieve everything we wanted to do, we feel frustrated, but we do not think that society has deceived us but we self-reproach, feeling that we are incapable. Handke preaches the need to return to a more conscious tiredness that unites and cures those who experience it. According to him, this is possible by re-evaluating the contemplative life devoted to not doing. Evading the pressing call of the world, renewing the barriers that delimit the ego does not mean being less free but more authentic. In the present context, it is not surprising that we are witnessing another curious phenomenon: the emergence of what can be called self-referential optimism. This is a widespread, almost religious belief that you have to be optimistic all the time. This optimistic attitude isn’t grounded into something real or actual, but only in itself. You should be optimistic not because you actually have something concrete to look forward to but just for the sake of it.Weber saw capitalism as “a monstrous cosmos”. In his view, capitalism was an all-encompassing economic and moral system, one of humanity’s most marvelous constructions. We who live in the system can rarely see it. We take its norms for granted, like the air we breathe. Everything you do, from going to the “right” preschool to laboring in a productive career to receiving medical care on your deathbed, you do because somewhere, someone thinks they can make money from it. The capitalist cosmos imposes a choice on you: adopt its ethic, or accept poverty and scorn. To show how we are building this society of tiredness, Han launches his argument from the basis of our achievement society. Such rhetoric is not just laughably absurd; it’s also inhumane. The fact is, American workers are more engaged than those in every other rich country, by Gallup’s own measure. Their level of engagement may indeed approach the human limit. (In Norway, the engagement rate is half the level it is in the US, and yet Norwegians are among the richest and happiest populations on earth.) Reception [ edit ] Han being awarded the Prix Bristol des Lumières [ fr] alongside Jacques Attali, Christophe Barbier, Philippe-Joseph Salazar, among others Constant Zoom meetings also make us tired. They turn us into Zoom zombies. They force us permanently to look into the mirror. Looking at your own face on the screen is tiring. We are continuously confronted with our own faces. Ironically, the virus appeared precisely at the time of the selfie, a fashion that can be explained as resulting from the narcissism of our society. The virus intensifies this narcissism. During the pandemic, we are all constantly confronted by our own faces; we produce a kind of never-ending selfie in front of our screens. That makes us tired.

Viral violence cannot account for neuronal illnesses such as depression, ADHD, or burnout syndrome, for it follows the immunological scheme of inside and outside, Own and Other; it presumes the existence of singularity or alterity which is hostile to the system. Neuronal violence does not proceed from system-foreign negativity. Instead, it is systemic—that is, system-immanent—violence. Depression, ADHD, and burnout syndrome point to excess positivity. Burnout syndrome occurs when the ego overheats, which follows from too much of the Same. The hyper in hyperactivity is not an immunological category. It represents the massification of the positive. Notes Call for Papers: The Itinerant Shrine: Art, History, and the Multiple Geographies of the Holy House of Loreto This change, which apparently empowers and is liberating, actually becomes a boomerang that soon beats us with all its strength because it hides a great psychological risk of which we are not aware. In Agonie des Eros ('Agony of the Eros') Han carries forward thoughts developed in his earlier books The Burnout Society ( German: Müdigkeitsgesellschaft) and Transparency Society ( German: Transparenzgesellschaft). Beginning with an analysis of the " Other" Han develops an interrogation of desire and love between human beings. Partly based on Lars von Trier's film Melancholia, where Han sees depression and overcoming depicted, Han further develops his thesis of a contemporary society that is increasingly dominated by narcissism and self-reference. Han's diagnosis extends even to the point of the loss of desire, the disappearance of the ability to devote to the "Other", the stranger, the non-self. At this point, subjects come to revolve exclusively around themselves, unable to build relationships. Even love and sexuality are permeated by this social change: sex and pornography, exhibition/voyeurism and re/presentation, are displacing love, eroticism, and desire from the public eye. The abundance of positivity and self-reference leads to a loss of confrontation. Thinking, Han states, is based on the "untreaded", on the desire for something that one does not yet understand. It is connected to a high degree with Eros, so the "agony of the Eros" is also an "agony of thought". Not everything must be understood and "liked", not everything must be made available. [11] Han calls the logical extreme of this “we-tiredness” – in other words “I am not tired of you, but rather I am tired with you.”

Depression is also a symptom of the burnout society. The achievement subject suffers burnout at the moment it is no longer able “to be able.” It fails to meet its self-imposed demand to achieve. No longer being able “to be able” leads to destructive self-recrimination and auto-aggression. The achievement subject wages a war against itself and perishes in it. Victory in this war against oneself is called burnout. Prácticas de la amabilidad: una interpretación del pensamiento de Byung-Chul Han. Areté. Revista de Filosofía, 34(2), 2022, pp. 291-318. ISSN 1016-913X

Q. You have described how work is becoming more like a game, and social media, paradoxically, makes us feel freer. Capitalism seduces us. Has the system managed to dominate us in a way that is actually pleasing to us? Spanish edition: Ausencia. Acerca de la cultura y la filosofía del Lejano Oriente. Caja Negra Editora, 2019, ISBN 9789871622726. The foreign has been sublated: the modern tourist now safely travels through it. We are suffering from the violence of the Self, not the Other. The Protestant ethic and the glorification of work is nothing new; however, that old subjectivity which was supposed to also have time for healthy relationships with partners, children and neighbors no longer exists. There’s no limit on production. Nothing is never enough for the modern ego. It is doomed to endlessly shuffling its many anxieties and desires, never resolving or satisfying them but only shifting between one and the other.These stable relations are unimaginable in the current climate which demands constant transformation, acceleration, overproduction and overachievement. It is not surprising then that we find ourselves in the midst of a burnout and exhaustion crisis. It is no longer as efficient to be told ‘you must do this’. The language has instead changed to ‘you can do this’ so that you voluntarily exploit yourself endlessly. Q. You received your doctorate with a thesis on German philosopher Martin Heidegger, who explored the most abstract forms of thought and whose texts are very obscure to the layman. Yet you manage to apply that abstract thinking to issues that anyone can experience. Should philosophy be more concerned with a world where the majority of the population lives?