One of Byung-Chul Han's most successful books. This book has already been translated into seven languages. In it he analyzes one of the most characteristic aspects of today's society: extreme individualism. The neoliberal proclamation of freedom actually manifests itself as an imperative: be free. It is dominated by an economy of survival in which everyone is his or her own entrepreneur. Neoliberalism, with its uninhibited narcissistic impulses of self and performance, is the hell of equals, a society of depression and exhaustion composed of isolated subjects. Walls and borders no longer bring fantasy, for they do not seek the other. "The 'you can' is more coercive than the 'you must'. One's own coercion is more fatal than the coercion of others".
From this arises also the current crisis of art, and of literature, which can be attributed to this disappearance of the other, to the agony of Eros. All this leads to what Nietzsche called the new slavery. It prefers health to freedom. Health is elevated to the status of the "great goddess." The "last man" will say Zarathustra venerates health because he only aspires to survive. Death no longer fits anywhere.