Byung-Chul Han Quotes
Byung-Chul Han is a Korean-born German philosopher and cultural theorist, professor at the Berlin University of the Arts, whose short and aphoristic books have become widely read diagnostic essays on contemporary digital society. The Burnout Society argued that the disciplinary society of the twentieth century has given way to a society of self-exploiting achievement subjects, while The Transparency Society and Psychopolitics anatomized the ways in which neoliberal data capitalism captures freedom itself in the form of voluntary self-disclosure. The quotes below are attributed to Byung-Chul Han, organized by topic.
Byung-Chul Han on Freedom
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“Violence and freedom are the two endpoints on the scale of power.”
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“Power is not opposed to freedom. It is precisely freedom that distinguishes power from violence or coercion.”
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“Rather, power is most powerful, most stable, where it creates a feeling of freedom and where it does not need to resort to violence.”
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Byung-Chul Han on Mind
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Attributed to Byung-Chul Han:
“Today's crisis is not the depression of the negative but the exhaustion of the positive.”
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Attributed to Byung-Chul Han:
“Without the secret, the soul withers.”
Byung-Chul Han on Politics
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Attributed to Byung-Chul Han:
“The achievement subject exploits itself; it is at once master and slave in one person.”
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Attributed to Byung-Chul Han:
“Power that operates through freedom is the most efficient form of power.”
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“The task of power is to transform the always possible 'no' into a 'yes.”
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“A truly powerful holder of power does not simply elicit agreement, but enthusiasm and excitement.”
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“Often what is absent has more power than what is present.”
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“When power is separated from any communicative context, it becomes naked violence.”
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“Power is more 'spacious' than violence. And violence becomes power if it 'gives itself more time.' Looked at from this perspective, power rests on an excess of space and time.”
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“Architecture is a way for power to achieve eloquence through form.”
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“Power is never naked. Rather, it is eloquent.”
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Byung-Chul Han on Time
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Attributed to Byung-Chul Han:
“The disappearance of rituals coincides with the disappearance of community.”