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Byung-Chul Han

b. 1959

A first way ina deliberate simplification – the portrait says more

Today’s society no longer represses us – it tells us we can do anything, so we exploit ourselves until we burn out.

Placement

Phenomenology & Hermeneutics · East Asia · Society & History, Existence & Self, Politics & Law

Korean-born philosopher in Berlin: the achievement society no longer represses – it exhausts subjects who exploit themselves.

Key ideas

  • Burnout society
  • Psychopolitics
  • Transparency society

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Influence

Influenced by 2

  • Friedrich Nietzsche

    influenced by

    In Müdigkeitsgesellschaft (2010) Han drew on Nietzsche’s call to learn to see, not to react at once to every stimulus, against the hyperactivity of the achievement society. B.-C. Han, Müdigkeitsgesellschaft (2010); F. Nietzsche, Götzen-Dämmerung (1889)

    Evidence: AI draft

    Friedrich Nietzsche › 1844–1900

  • Martin Heidegger

    influenced by ✓

    Han wrote his Freiburg dissertation (1994) on mood (Stimmung) in Heidegger (Heideggers Herz, 1996) and drew on him for a renewed vita contemplativa in Duft der Zeit (2009). B.-C. Han, Heideggers Herz. Zum Begriff der Stimmung bei Martin Heidegger (1996); Duft der Zeit. Ein philosophischer Essay zur Kunst des Verweilens (2009)

    Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata

    Martin Heidegger › 1889–1976

Criticism

Criticizes 1

  • Michel Foucault

    criticised

    Byung-Chul Han argued that Foucault’s disciplinary society and biopolitics no longer describe neoliberalism, whose achievement-subject exploits itself through psychopolitics (Müdigkeitsgesellschaft, 2010; Psychopolitik, 2014). B.-C. Han, Müdigkeitsgesellschaft (2010); Psychopolitik. Neoliberalismus und die neuen Machttechniken (2014)

    Evidence: AI draft

    Michel Foucault › 1926–1984

Works

  • 2010The Burnout Society

    Not discipline but the compulsion to achieve: depression and burnout as the illnesses of the age.

Position

Han describes a shift in how power works today. The disciplinary society analysed by Foucault, with its prohibitions and commands, has given way to an achievement society in which people exploit themselves while feeling free. Its typical illnesses are not infections but depression and burnout: the subject collapses under the demand to be ever more productive. Han continues the diagnosis in short, aphoristic books on transparency, digital communication and “psychopolitics,” in which data and smart technologies steer people through their own wishes. As a counterweight he praises contemplation, slowness, ritual and the experience of the other. His books have been translated into many languages.

Life & context

Byung-Chul Han was born in Seoul in 1959 and first studied metallurgy in Korea. He then moved to Germany, where he studied philosophy, German literature and theology in Freiburg and Munich and took his doctorate with a dissertation on Heidegger. After teaching in Basel and Karlsruhe he became professor at the Berlin University of the Arts. He writes his books in German.

Further main works

  • The Transparency Society (2012)
  • Psychopolitics (2014)
  • The Expulsion of the Other (2016)

Appears in

Sources: Wikipedia · Wikidata

As of November 2026 · Sources · Improve this page · How Agora is made

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