Byung-Chul Han is a South Korean-born Swiss-German philosopher and cultural theorist. He was a professor at the Berlin University of the Arts and still occasionally gives courses there.
Ritual practices ensure that we treat not only other people but also things in beautiful ways, that there is an affinity between us and other people as well as things.
We can define rituals as symbolic techniques of making oneself at home in the world. They transforming being at home to being in the world. They turn the world into a reliable place. They are to time what a home is to space. They render time habitable.
Rituals are symbolic acts. They represent, and pass on, the values and orders on which a community is based. They bring forth a community without communication; today, however, communication without community prevails.
Logos is powerless without the force of eros.
Thinking is an expedition into quietness.
There is no such thing as data-driven thinking.
The eros-driven soul produces beautiful things, and, above all, beautiful actions, which have a universal value.
Money, as a matter of principle, makes everything the same.
The inner music of things sounds only when you close your eyes.
Pornography completes the deritualization of love.
The erotic is never free of secrecy.
The pornographic face says nothing. It has no expressivity or mystery.
What is obscene about pornography is not an excess of sex, but the fact that it contains no sex at all.
Happiness is the proof that time can accommodate eternity.
Whatever is merely positive is lifeless. Negativity is essential to vitality.