Episode #235 ... The Philosophy of Zen Buddhism - Byung Chul Han

Stephen West· Host0:00

Hello everyone. I'm Stephen West. This is Philosophize This!. Patreon.com/philosophizethis if you wanna help keep the show a thing. Philosophical writing on Substack at Philosophize This! on there as well. Thanks to everyone, by the way, who's told a friend about this podcast over the years. Really appreciate it. Most of all, though, I hope you love the show today. So by this point, we've done three episodes on Byung-Chul Han, and it can start to seem like the guy might just be a negative person, like, in general. [scoffs] Guy needs a, like an Edible Arrangement sent to him or something. Cheer him up a bit, you know? I mean, think of all the criticism this guy brings into a room. My God. Always complaining about something going on in modern society. Apparently, we all live in a digital panopticon if you're him, something that most of us, I guess, don't even know that we're in, let alone us being capable of finding a way out of it. He says we have very little that binds or connects us together anymore as a species, that we have no shared understanding of truth anymore or of community. We don't even have shared stories to tie our lives together. That's what we talked about a couple episodes ago. In fact, I saw an interview with him one time where he said, "It's impossible to be someone who's thinking and paying attention to the world right now and to not be pessimistic about it." But is this statement telling the full story of the work of Byung-Chul Han and all that he has to say? Is it possible that this statement is true in a way? He does look out at the world and feel very pessimistic about where most things are headed, but that he also thinks there are certain choices people can make in life, certain ideas someone can pay attention to, where there's actually a lot of hope for an individual that's willing to put in the time and effort.