Byung-Chul Han and the hopeful mind

Hope is a matter of theology and Marxism. It can be transcendental or historical. For the Greeks it was a consolation, for Christians it was a confidence that sets us on the path towards the divine. Spinoza believed that it was better to live without hope and to stick to reason. Gabriel Marcel conceives of it as an opening to mystery, Ernst Bloch as a remnant of the original hunger, from that time when subject and object had not yet been dissociated. Hope encourages reconciliation, which Bloch associates with dialectical materialism (an ideal and utopian future) and the mystics with the ability to make the origin present.

Byung-Chul Han begins the book with a series of commonplaces that are worth remembering. A gloomy mind produces catastrophes. A peaceful mind produces happiness. An ancient Buddhist idea. One becomes what one thinks. That is the mysterious mechanism of the world. The mind, like literature and art, designs historical scenarios. Fear summons the apocalypse: pandemics, wars, climatic disasters. The obsession with control leads to catastrophe. Fear is not only a threat to democracy, it is a threat to life itself. Fear makes organisms sick, it multiplies phobias, racism and resentment. Fear is also an old strategy of domination, it makes people manipulable. We have recently seen this on a global level. The frightened defend it: it is a strategy of survival, of caution, which allows one to avoid dangers. They rave. Where there is fear, freedom is impossible. At least that is how the mystics with a loving heart see it. “Let there be no cowards. Let us risk life. For there is no one who guards it better than the one who gives it up for lost.” This is the attitude that Teresa of Avila proposes. A confident, hopeful attitude that reflects the conviction that the world has meaning.

Hope does not reside in the future, as Han says. Hope is a condition of life itself. A matter of the present.

Goethe said that one can only know what one loves. The deeper that love, the deeper the knowledge. Hence, a mechanical device, incapable of love, cannot know anything. Attention must be guided by Eros. Love does not make us blind, but rather sighted. Love does not distort reality, but rather reveals it. Max Scheler, an eroticized philosopher, wrote this. The great Plato recalled: “Knowledge is an act of love,” and his disciple Augustine, “we only know what we love.” Today we have left knowledge in the hands of specialists and machines. The knowledge of the machine is frigid, that of the specialist is narrow, lacking perspective, narrow. Han reminds us that this word is the sister of anguish. We live in times of anguish, affliction and anxiety. These emotions should not be confused with despair. We do not live in despair, we live in anxiety. Kierkegaard thought that despair (and not reason) was the hallmark of the human. A tendency that favoured the emergence of its counterpart, hope. Anxiety is an oppressive fear without a precise cause. Despair is more theatrical and angry, more creative. It opens the field, it does not close it, like anxiety.

Han’s latest books are collections of quotes, which are then linked, paraphrased and expanded with a certain elegance. They are archive books, collage books, brief and didactic. They lack originality, but they are necessary. We see Wittgenstein, Camus, Heidegger, Arendt, Kafka, Erich Fromm and Nietzsche parade among others. The South Korean philosopher is right in pointing out that the cult of optimism isolates people, makes them selfish and suppresses empathy. The suffering of others ceases to interest. Each person is concerned only with himself, with his own happiness and well-being. It does not matter that this happiness is a masquerade erected on networks. It is something very neoliberal. The cult of optimism makes society unsupportive. But, in addition, it is a strategic error. The Buddhist monk Śāntideva warned about it. “All those tormented in this world are tormented by the desire to be happy. All happy people are happy because they want others to be happy.”

One last thought. Hope does not dwell in the future, as Han says. Hope is a condition of life itself. A matter of the present. It moves forward and backward, projects itself into the future and seeks the origin. Hope promises and remembers. It is similar to freedom in that both create themselves. Hope is that story that infuses courage and strength to face risks and difficulties. It unfolds and guides action, while presenting the world in a different light: the light of the origin.

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