Contemplation and Silence:Byung-Chul Han on Heidegger's"Heart"
Byung-Chul Han's seldom mentioned dissertation Heidegger's Heart:Heidegger's Concept of Emotion(1996),is a heterotical work which is not entirely within the realm of orthodox Heideggerian literature but it has always permeated many of Han's subsequent works.In Heidegger's usage,the"heart"is an unusual sense organ,which is a fusion of eyes,ears,hands and love,in order to overcome metaphysics,it has to be cut out and revised.It is such a painful process that Byung-chul Han calls it the"circumcision of the heart".In his view,the circumcision of the heart as performed by Heidegger in Sein und Zeit is only half-hearted,while in Palliativgesellschaft(2020),Han expounds on the"existential theory of pain".The"heart"with these emotions opens the threshold to the house of being.The"threshold"(Schwelle)imagery is always present in Han's interpretation of Heidegger,who is a stranger to the thresholdlessness of today's hypertextual or hypercultural world.Heidegger also refers to suffering as a threshold,but the cunning of modern society has dissolved all suffering with entertainment,while the sacred is also irrevocably reduced to entertainment and loses its sacred transcendence,and all"timidity"(Scheu)disappears.In Vita contemplative(2022),following the late Heidegger in his exploration of the contemplation of"doing nothing"(Untätigkeit)where he thinks highly of things that are precisely useless without any purpose or use,Han further refines Heidegger's"timid heart",which guards existence,into an"ethics of timidity".This fundamental understanding of Heidegger's philosophy also sets the tone of Han's social critique.Contemplation and"doing nothing"(Untätigkeit)are the antithesis of the performance society(Werkwelt),which is also where the possibility of overcoming capitalism lies;that is why Han repeatedly emphasizes"capitalism dislikes silence".Heidegger's contemplation of the Untätigkeit of the unusable is an attempt to counteract the disposability that makes everything completely accessible,calculable,controllable,manipulable,dominant,and consumable.The contemplation and silence that Han seeks to target against capitalism is not the contemplation of Untätigkeit in the sense of Heidegger's contemplation of the unusable,but the contemplation and silence of true"emptiness"and"nothingness"in the tradition of Eastern thought.Therefore,in Heidegger's Heart,Han suggests that Heidegger's"heart"is both a metaphor for overcoming the economy of metaphysical subjectivity and a non-metaphysical way of thinking.However,the moods and voices of the existential"heart"in early Heidegger still bear the traces of subjectivity,and his efforts to overcome metaphysics have not transcended the metaphysical realm.In Han's subsequent works,he sees that although Heidegger attempts to cross the threshold of metaphysics by exploring terms such as Denken,Schmerz,and Angst,he failed because,on one hand,Heidegger's contemplation and silence was still within the realm of Western metaphysics,and on the other,many of Heidegger's terminologies have already lost their interpretive validity in the face of modem achievements and the burnout of society.In Han's words,social critical theory is in dire need of a"digital upgrade"of Sein und Zeit,while the possibility of overcoming metaphysics still lies in Heidegger's other terms such as Scheu,Kontemplation and Stille,as well as in traditional East Asia thought,which is another story to be told.
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