Byung-Chul Han (Seoul, 1959) studied philosophy at the University of Freiburg, German literature and theology at the University of Munich. In 1994 he received his doctorate in Freiburg with a thesis on Martin Heidegger. He is the author of more than twenty books.
After his famous essays of negative criticism of the neo-liberal regime, the famous philosopher Byung-Chul Han undertakes in this new work not a turning point, but a true overcoming towards an encouraging vision of man. In the human spirit resides the capacity to make the most barren fertile. Wars, mass migrations, attacks, climatic catastrophes, crises and pandemics: apocalyptic scenarios confront us with an imminent threat of collapse and extinction. And, as we go from catastrophe to catastrophe, our real life is suffocated and reduced to pure survival. Yet, out of the deepest despair is also born the most intimate hope. Hope opens up future times and unprecedented spaces, which we enter by dreaming. It is a whole way of existing, which does not result from given facts, but makes new events possible precisely when they seemed most impossible.”
say on hope, Byung-Chul Han offers us a careful and suggestive phenomenological description of something as essential to human life as hope. He provides an optimistic vision on this question, in continuous dialogue with numerous representative figures of the world of contemporary thought, especially philosophers. In these dialogues, he draws on their most valuable insights and criticizes their weakest points. A certain knowledge of contemporary philosophy is required to make this reading more profitable and thus be able to tune in better with the ideas that the author wishes to convey. His phenomenological style avoids definitions, and builds his thought with successive descriptions that show, little by little, his central nucleus.
Byung-Chul Han shows a realistic and suggestive orientation on hope, although he always moves in a phenomenological perspective. If one wanted to base absolute hope more rigorously, one would have to turn to the metaphysics of being, which facilitates better access to transcendence, to God as Supreme Being. It is an essay that invites us to reflect on hope and, ultimately, on Christian hope. It is a stimulating and recommendable reading.