Reflections on Vita Contemplativa by Byung-Chul Han (Part One)

(Polity Press, 2024)

 

 

I. 

 

The subtitle of Byung-Chul Han's new little book is In Praise of Inactivity [a]. But it's important to understand at the outset that he uses this term in a positive philosophical sense. That is to say, he conceives of inactivity as a negative potentiality; the ability to do nothing.

 

But Han is not merely encouraging us to be idle in the laid-back and whimsical manner of Tom Hodgkinson - although, to be fair to the latter, I feel I was perhaps a little harsh on him back in 2012 [b]. Nor is he encouraging his readers to learn the art of immaculate perception so they can look at life without desire [c].     

 

He wants us, rather, to engage in a form of deep attentiveness that is central to the vita contemplativa [d]. To perform less: to consume less: to be still and silent a little more, so as to radiate in our own starry singularity and not merely keep rolling on and on like a stone subject to mechanical laws.    

 

 

II. 

 

In a line that would delight the witches of Treadwell's, Han writes: "Inactivity has a logic of its own, its own language, temporality, architecture, magnificence - even its own magic." [1] 

 

Inactivity, he goes on to say, is an intensity - an unseen power that is crucial to Dasein's existence (not a weakness, an absence, a lack, or a defect). And philosophical reflection - or thought in the Lawrentian sense of the term [e] - is born of this intensity. 

 

Only machines don't know how to rest or reflect; artificial intelligence is born of activity, not inactivity. They - the machines - may be very good at organising and coordinating chaos, but they don't know how to give style, which is why they may drive society forward, but they'll never give birth to culture:

 

"History and culture are not congruent. Culture is formed by diversion, excess and detour; it is not produced by following the path that leads straight to the goal. The essence at the core of culture is ornamentation. Culture sits beyond functionality and usefulness. The ornamental dimension, emancipated from any goal or use, is how life insists that it is more than survival. Life receives its divine radiance from that absolute decoration that does not adorn anything." [3]   

 

 

III.

 

Han is basically reviving an old set of terms and values, such as festivity and luxury, whilst rejecting those terms and values that define our present (utilitarian) world order: efficiency and functionality. Freedom from purpose and usefulness, he says, is "the essential core of inactivity" [5] and the key to human happiness. 

 

Which is fine - this remains an important teaching - but it's nothing new. And one can't help wondering if Han doesn't spend far more of his time endlessly re-reading those authors whom he privileges rather than contemplating life (and the natural world) directly. 

 

For whilst there are plenty of DWEMs in his book, there are very few live animals; even the hesitant wing of the butterfly is a reference to an elegy by Schiller (via Walter Benjamin) rather than to an actual insect and I miss the sound of bees buzzing and birds calling in his writing. 

 

Unfortunately, when you enter the space of thinking opened up by Han, it feels like one is entering a magnificent library or a cathedral rather than an "unexplored realm of dangerous knowledge" [f], or a jungle with "tigers and palm trees and rattle snakes" [g] and all the other wonders hatched by a hot sun. 

 

I think it was Sartre who once said of Bataille: 'He tells us to laugh, but he does not make us laugh.' And I kind of feel the same about Han: he tells us to dance and to play, but he fails to make us feel either lightfooted or lighthearted. Likewise, when he gathers us round the camp fire - a medium of inactivity - we are not warmed.   

 

 

IV.

 

I suppose the problem I have is that Han is just a bit too much of an ascetic philosopher. 

 

Thus, whilst he wants to revive the notion of the festival, he insists nevertheless that festivals must be "free from the needs of mere life" [7] and tries to convince us that it's better to fast than to feast; that the former is noble in character and helps initiate us into the secrets of food.  

 

What is inactivity, he suggests, other than ultimately a form of spiritual fasting. 

 

I have to admit, I don't like this idea of going to bed hungry and going to bed early; nor, for that matter, do I want to go to bed cold, as I've done that too often in the past and it doesn't make life any more vital or radiant. 

 

Nor does it make it easier to sleep - the latter being  a medium of truth for Han (as for Proust and Freud): "Sleep reveals a true internal world that lies behind the things of the external world, which are mere semblance. The dreamer delves into the deeper layers of being." [9] [h]

 

Again, that's not the kind of idea - or language - that I'm comfortable with. I simply do not believe that sleep and dreams are "privileged places for truth" [9] - even though I love a good nap as much as anyone.    

 

However, I'm a bit more sympathetic to the idea that boredom - as that state of inactivity which allows for mental relaxation - is something we should cherish (even whilst coming from a punk background in which being bored was just about the worst thing that could befall one). 

 

I understand now that boredom isn't half as boring as the distractions invented to relieve us from boredom and that the less able we are to endure boredom, so our ability to enjoy life's real pleasures or do great things decreases. As Han says: 

 

"The seed of the new is not the determination to act but the unconscious event. When we lose the capacity to experience boredom, we also lose access to the activities that rest on it." [17]

 

And so it is that now I admire those who, like David Puddy, can just patiently sit still during a flight without having to flick through a magazine, watch a film, or start a conversation [i].    

 

 

V. 

 

Blanchot, Han reminds us, places inactivity in close relation to death: as the utmost intensification of the latter. 

 

And so too does he suggest that art also requires an "intensive relation to death" [12]. It is death, for example - not the will to knowledge or self-expression - that opens up the space of literature and writers can only write thanks to their inactivity and their proximity to death.

 

And the best writers, as Roland Barthes recognised, are those who dare to be idle and do not continually affirm their authorship of a text, or constantly promote themselves: "They give up their names and become no one. Nameless and intentionless, they succumb to what happens." [15] 

 

In an interview for Le Monde in 1979, Barthes marvelled at the simplicity of a Zen poem which perfectly expresses what it is he dreams about:

 

Sitting peacefully doing nothing

Springtime is coming

and the grass grows all by itself [j]   

 

It's a nice thought that inactivity has a "de-subjectifying, de-individualizing, even disarming effect" [15]. That, in other words, it allows us to disappear and leave nothing behind us but a smile like the Cheshire Cat ...

 

 

John Tenniel's illustration of the Cheshire Cat beginning to 

vanish in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland (1865)

 

 

Notes

 

[a] Byung-Chul Han, Vita Contemplativa: In Praise of Inactivity, trans. Daniel Steuer, (Polity Press, 2024). The book was originally published as Vita Contemplativa: Oder von der Untatigkeit (Ullstein Verlag, 2022). All page numbers given in the post refer to the English edition. 

 

[b] See the post entitled 'How to be an Idle Cunt' (29 Dec 2012): click here. 

 

[c] See the post entitled 'The Voyeur' (29 April 2013): click here. 

 

[d] This Latin phrase - popular with Augustine and the scholastics - comes from the ancient Greek concept of βίος θεωρητικός formulated by Aristotle and later developed by the Stoics. In English it is usually translated simply as contemplative life.   

 

[e] "Thought is the welling up of unknown life into consciousness [...] a man in his wholeness wholly attending" and not the "jiggling and twisting of already existent ideas". See D. H. Lawrence, 'Thought', The Poems, Vol. 1, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 580-81. 

      I discuss Lawrence's philosophy of mind with reference to this poem in a post published on 4 Dec 2015: click here.  

 

[f] Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, (Penguin Books, 1990), p. 53.

 

[g] Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, (Penguin Books, 1969), p. 165.  

 

[h] Click here for a post on sleep and dreams published on 6 Feb 2015. 

 

[i] David Puddy is a fictional character on the situation comedy Seinfeld, played by Patrick Warburton. He is the on-and-off boyfriend of the character Elaine Benes. Click here to watch the scene I'm thinking of in the season 9 episode 'The Butter Shave' (dir. Andy Ackerman, 1997).  

 

[j] See Roland Barthes, 'Dare to Be Lazy', in The Grain of the Voice, trans. Linda Coverdale, (University of California Press, 1991), p. 341. Han quotes this haiku on p. 15 of Vita Contemplativa.  

 

 

Further reflections on Byung-Chul Han's Vita Contemplativa can be found in part two of this post - click here and part three: click here.   

Why I'm Not a Chap

thechap.co.uk

 

As readers of Torpedo the Ark will know, I have long advocated a revolt into style and celebrated the figure of the dandy. 

 

And yet, I've never quite bought into the charmed uprising advocated by The Chap; a British magazine, founded in 1999, that is dedicated to the gentlemanly way of life and seeks to defend old-fashioned values whilst, paradoxically, pioneering new trends in fashion. 

It's not the way of life or world-view being advocated that makes me uncomfortable, however. 

 

It is, rather, the chaps themselves whom I think suspect. For whilst the writers and editors of The Chap insist that they take their anarcho-dandyism [1] seriously, Gustav Temple and company ultimately remind me Tom Hodgkinson and chums at The Idler [2]. 

 

In other words, they are basically middle-class professionals [3] self-consciously trying to be something they're not, whilst satirising the sincere behaviour and beliefs of those who belonged to earlier generations. 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Anarcho-dandyism is a particularly irksome contradiction in terms. However, those who wish to know more can click here to read The Chap Manifesto, or here to learn about several events staged by chaps over the years in order to protest the vulgarity of the modern world.     

 

[2] See the post of 29 December, 2012 entitled 'How to be an Idle Cunt': click here. 

      To be fair, it should be pointed out that Gustav Temple rejects any comparison between The Chap and The Idler. In a 2004 interview with Andrew Stevens for 3:AM  he says, for example, that whilst The Idler has its good points, its appeal is essentially more to contemporary slackers than to traditional gentlemen. To read this interview, click here. 

 

[3] Chaps mostly seem to inhabit the privileged worlds of publishing, journalism, academia, marketing and communications ... etc. They're quirky, but without being twisted; eccentric, but LinkedIn at the same time. You can meet these bourgeois anarchists (if you want to) by clicking here. 

 

     

In Praise of Sleep

Man Ray: Sleeping Woman (1929) 

Museum of Modern Art, New York

What can one do, asks Nietzsche, when one succumbs to ennui and feels sick and tired of everything and everyone, including oneself -?

Some recommend drugs; others a stroll in the park. Still others say you should turn to Jesus.

Nietzsche, however, believes the best thing to counteract that awful mixture of boredom, fatigue, and depression is plenty of sleep – both real and metaphorical. Philosophy, a discipline born of idleness, teaches the importance of knowing how to nod off, in either sense, at the right time and in the right way.

Speaking as someone who has regularly compromised their sleep over the years, let me also affirm the vital necessity of a good night’s rest - and, indeed, of daytime naps. Sleep not only sharpens the mind and the senses, as neuroscientists confirm, but it makes happier, healthier, and more creative.

I was once rather disparaging about Tom Hodgkinson (click here), but I agree entirely with him that it’s an absolute certainty that in paradise, everyone naps.

Notes 

Nietzsche, Daybreak, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, (Cambridge University Press, 1982), IV. 376.

Tom Hodgkinson, How to be Idle, (Penguin Books, 2005); see in particular the sections on morning lie-ins, afternoon naps, and the joy of finally retiring to bed at the end of each day. 

How to be an Idle Cunt

Is the writer Tom Hodgkinson the most despicable human being in the world? Perhaps not. But his book, How to be Idle (Penguin Books, 2005), remains the most offensive publication I have ever read: snobbish, sexist, racist, banal and moralistic, it was of course critically acclaimed by his chums in the media.   

One might have expected far more from a man who openly boasts of his knowledge of the "philosophy, fiction, poetry and history of the last three thousand years" [P] than to be told that the working class are gullible and too stupid to delegate or live life according to their own rules. But that, pretty much, is the central message.

He still loves them of course, for he's a man of the people who, when not hiring nannies for the children or contributing articles to The Daily Telegraph, likes nothing better than to listen to the Clash. Tom might have purchased his idleness at the expense of others - those "office girls with lots of make-up" and "immigrants with hard hats" [14] that he refers to - but he's still a punk revolutionary at heart.

Tom loves the homeless too. And, without wanting to over-romanticize them, he thinks it a real shame that they are seen as unfortunates in need of help, rather than  happy souls who "do not want a job ... do not want to become middle class ... do not want to keep fixed hours and spend their surplus income in department stores and theme parks" [108]. Tom knows this, because it says so in a song by the Monkees. But is it not peculiarly insulting to be told this by a man who, whilst working at The Guardian on the homes-and-interiors supplement, came up with the line 'staying in is the new going out'?

However, next time a homeless young person approaches, rather than mumble about not having any change, I shall take the opportunity to inform them that they "represent an ideal ... of pure living in the moment, of wandering without destination, of freedom from worldly care" [110].

No need then for more temporary accommodation to be made available, or new houses to be built. No need for hospitals either, because, according to Tom, it's a good thing to be sick: "bodily suffering  can improve the mind" [69]. Instead, what we should do is open more pubs and tobacconists: because alcohol makes us into "thinking, feeling, laughing, independent human beings" [113] and smoking "transforms the common man into something more heroic, more complete" [137]. Perhaps the latter is true; but if completion involves developing malignant tumours, I for one would prefer to remain incomplete.

Tom also supports the opening of legalized brothels, because the "quest for liberty" is tied to "the pursuit of sexual freedoms" [194]. In practice, this seems to mean fucking prostitutes, masturbating with pornography, and being raped: "Oh, to lie back and be used and abused! This is surely the secret wish of every sexual slacker" [198].

Not that he advocates too much debauchery as he slips happily towards respectable middle-age. For one thing, he doesn't have enough "energy (or staff!) to get blasted all the time" [222]. And besides, his real pleasure now is getting plenty of sleep in order to "restore body and mind to a comfortable condition" [222]: his bourgeois default setting.

In fact, it was whilst innocently day-dreaming that Tom came up with the idea of starting his own business and forging a successful writing career so that he might have his ideal life. Good for him! But whilst dreaming might be free, one might wonder where he found the capital needed in order to do these things: his professed frugality and thriftiness perhaps? Or was it from his wealthy parents, his famous friends, or his business partner and old school pal, Gavin Pretor-Pinney?

I don't know and I don't really care. But I would like to know why it is Tom Hodgkinson's model of idleness has to involve such naked ambition and colossal conceit. He's not the most despicable human being in the world. But ...