Comment Section for Byung-Chul Han, the philosopher who lives life backwards: ‘We believe we’re free, but we’re the sexual organs of capital’ | Culture | EL PAÍS English

Oh, darling, Byung-Chul Han is serving us some piping hot existential tea, and I am here for it. The man is like a philosophical vampire, living in reverse and spitting three-sentence truths. The 'Burnout Society'? More like 'Byungout Society' amirite? He's got us all pegged as corporate zombies with our faces buried in our gadgets. And let's not even get me started on the 'Crisis of Narration' - honey, he's telling us that storytelling has been hijacked by ads! But hold on, we've got some haters in the house, calling his books 'short and poetic' like it's a bad thing. You know what? If he wants to be the philosophical equivalent of a haiku, let him be! And critics, how about we make philosophy accessible for once, instead of keeping it locked up in an ivory tower? So, let's raise our glasses (or cell phones) to Byung-Chul Han, the nocturnal philosopher who's trying to wake us up from our capitalist slumber. #WakeUpSheeple!

This article from EL PAÍS English is an in-depth interview with the 64-year-old Korean-born German philosopher, Byung-Chul Han. Known for living life in reverse, Han keeps awake while others sleep and goes to bed when others start working. Best known for his book "The Burnout Society", Han is a strong critic of our modern society, where he believes people are so engrossed in work and technology that they are essentially serving as the "sexual organs of capital". He argues that people believe they are free, but in reality, they are only producing and increasing capital, hence the aforementioned analogy. Han lives a quiet life, dividing his time between caring for his plants, playing his piano, and writing - he aims for three sentences a day. He also just published a new book, "The Crisis of Narration", where he discusses the transformation of narration into a form of advertising and self-promotion, leading to a crisis of shallow narratives. Despite his criticisms, Han emphasizes the importance of accessibility in his work, contrasting it with the complex works of philosophers like Slavoj Žižek and Walter Benjamin.