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The fundamental questions of "Heidegger's Heart" and its role

in the work of Byung-Chul Han

The main topics of "Heidegger's heart" and its role in Byung-Chul Han's work

ALBERTO MORAN ROA1

Resume

Heidegger's heart: Martin de Heidegger's concept of «state of mind», recently translated

into Spanish, provides valuable keys for understanding and studying the work of Byung-
Chul Han in the Spanish-speaking world. In this article we will explain how this text sheds
light on Han's philosophical foundations, the constitution of his relationship project with
otherness, the phenomenological framework in which it originates, and the essential role
of Martin Heidegger in his thought. In the same way, it helps to identify the stages of their
journey, as well as the changes experienced in their proposals.

Keywords: Byung-Chul Han, Heidegger, phenomenology, otherness

Abstract

Heidegger's heart: the concept of «mood» by Martin Heidegger [Heidegger's heart: the
concept of «mood» in Martin Heidegger], recently translated into Spanish, provides
valuable keys for the understanding and study of Byung-Chul Han's work in the Spanish-
speaking world. In this paper we aim to show the way in which this texts sheds light on
Han's philosophical foundation, the constitution of his project of relation with otherness,
the phenomenological framework in which it originates and the essential role of Martin
Heidegger in his thought. Moreover, it helps in identifying the stages of his development,
as well as the changes his proposals have undergone.
Key words: Byung-Chul Han, Heidegger, phenomenology, otherness

Received: 10/28/2021. Accepted: 12/04/2021.

PhD student at UNED, under the direction of Kilian Lavernia Biescas (UNED) and Alba Jiménez
one

Rodríguez (UCM). This article has been possible thanks to the support of the pre-doctoral fellowship of
the HERCRITIA-Santander Chair for Research in Ontological Hermeneutics and Aesthetics.

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Introduction

The recent translation into Spanish of Heidegger's heart: the concept of «state of

spirit" by Martin Heidegger contributes significantly to the understanding and study

Byung-Chul Han in the Spanish-speaking world. Developed from his thesis

doctoral degree from the University of Freiburg in 1994, we find in its pages a Han

academic, still oblivious to the analysis of neoliberal society and its various thematizations

—performance, transparency, palliative, etc.—, which develops here the bases

of a thought whose essential parameters still articulate up to its most recent

works.

On the other hand, Heidegger's Heart is of interest to appreciate the difference between

the early works of Byung-Chul Han and the more current ones, from The Society of

tiredness to the present, characterized by their brevity and interest in

problems derived from the neoliberal regime and the operation of power. to this change

of style already points out in a 2012 interview, in which Han declared the inability of the

academic field of responding to contemporary problems and communicating them

effectively2. With this second itinerary we are not, therefore, facing a change in its

approaches, but rather before a concretion, in a language and with a theme

adapted to current problems and circumstances3, of those theses

fundamentals exposed in a more technical way in the early works. It should be noted

that this perspective that relates moods and cultural criticism is not a

forced dislocation, a Hanian whim, but a connection already raised by the man himself

Heidegger4.

2
Han (2012a, p. 65) affirms: «Die akademische Philosophie in Deutschland ist leider total erstarrt und
leblos. Sie lässt sich nicht auf die Gegenwart, auf gesellschaftliche Probleme der Gegenwart ein».
3
Far from diluting philosophy, we consider that Han responds to the imperative raised by Quintín
Racionero: «The very character of presentation or scientific literary genre with which [the academic
production of philosophy] is conveyed means that it does not reach social life, that it does not is integrated
into any of the circuits of interest through which the concerns of the world cross. [Philosophy] has to
return to the present, and for this very reason it has to adjust the language without renouncing the ideals
of reflection, criticism [of common opinions], encouragement, [of] identification of problems». Online
interview , March 2012, accessible at https://youtu.be/ArwW6BVQbs8
4
As Held (2015, 21) points out: «According to the Contributions to Philosophy and with the lesson of the
winter semester of 1937-39 contemporaneous with them, fright is the mental temper in which our time is
mentally tempered by the abysmal indigence of this subtraction. The disposition for authentic anguish is
therefore required by this historical destitution».

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Finally, this paper shows how the Heideggerian foundations that

exposed here articulate the Hanian proposal of relationship with the world, which in turn

constitutes the heart of his work. The concerns that run through Han's work are

traceable to these pages; the investigations that begin here about the relationship

with alterity they develop and guide the investigation more than twenty years later. For

Finally, returning to these origins shows the changes that his

thinking on issues such as dialectics or the role of narration.

being and state of mind

The analysis undertaken in The Heart of Heidegger is part of the investigation

Haniana on the relationship —in the key of tuning, temper and tonality, within the semantic field of

acoustics in which the Stimmung5 itself moves— with the entities, the

alterity and being itself. From this primordial concern, reflections are developed

core aspects of the impossible-to-close relationship between identity and difference,

interiority and exteriority, presence and concealment. We are, therefore, in the

Heidegger's notion of the event as an intermediate sphere between the withdrawal of being and

the presentation of what is, between the "no longer" and the "not yet," that irruption that

Heidegger (1999a, 167) defines it as a "transit from coming to disappearing".

Devoid therefore of self-referential substantiality, devoid of any derivation

of other concepts, of hierarchy or, as we will see later, of dialectical closure, the

space of being is understood here from and as a radical relationalism6, opposed to the idea

of the effective, present and substantialist being that onto metaphysics would have incurred

theo-logic. If we stick to the Heideggerian reading of the history of philosophy, this

torsion would have originated in Plato —who would have conceived, says Heidegger (2017,

702) being as idea, pure presence, and the logos as the place of a truth reduced to

adequacy—and crystallized in Cartesian metaphysics, with the subject conceived, again

according to Heidegger (2017, 635) as fundamentum absolutum inconcussum veritatis,

aprioristic and re-presentative.

5
We will refer to this complicated translation term as “state of mind”, for consistency with the main
text on which we are working. There are, however, alternatives, such as "chord" (Pöggeler, O., El
camino del pensar de Martin Heidegger, trans. Félix Duque, Madrid, Alianza, 1988, p. 59) and
"affective tonality" (Duque, F., « Heidegger's humors. Theory of affective tonalities", in Archipelago,
49, 2001, pp.97-119), as well as "temper of spirit" (Redondo Sánchez, P., Filosofar from the temper
of spirit, Univ. De Salamanca, Salamanca, 2005, p.15).
6
This relationism would oppose the binary of authors such as Pascal, whose heart, as Han (2021b,
29) defends, would still be based on an opposition between interiority and exteriority. This critique of
binaryism, so characteristic of Derrida, is also fed by a Heideggerian substratum.

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From this premise, the task of overcoming modern metaphysics and

western, advocating a thinking that must take charge of the absence of foundations

last and of directing metaphysical instances7, maintaining, says Han (2021b, 192)

subscribing to Heidegger, "acrobatically into the abyss." Again with (or from)

Heidegger, Han therefore opposes the notion of commercium between subject and object and

to the representative gaze: this, because of its thematizing nature and its projection

interested in things, would not be able to grasp what Heidegger (1999a, 107)

calls the openness of a "There". He also subscribes to the Heideggerian thesis for the

which the essential openness of Dasein would not be turned towards objects but towards

the correlative opening of the world, and it would be thanks to the potential of the Stimmung and its

originality. The Outstanding Mood of Anxiety, Presented by Heidegger

(2014, 268) as the «opening to the fact that Dasein exists as a thrown being

turned towards its end», leads in What is metaphysics? to Dasein before nothingness, in a

complete indifferentiation. It will be in this text where, as Redondo Sánchez details

(2005, 19), the Stimmung of anguish "makes way for the occurrence of being and nothingness ." This

manifest character of nothingness constitutes the condition of possibility of freedom —

understood from the point of view of the essence of truth as a "letting be to beings" -, at the same

time that provides the foundation of the astonishment in which we are affected, appealed, by

the strange of the being. On the other hand, profound boredom—the other state of mind

presented in What is metaphysics? —that quiet mist that gathers everything in the

indifference makes possible, according to Heidegger (2007, 192), "the freedom of existence in

as such», therefore it would also allow access to letting beings be. However, this

freedom of existence would only take place when it resolves itself, a

observation that will lead Han to be skeptical about the thesis around the

boredom, which situates in the early pathos of Heideggerian authenticity.

Despite this, Han will not abandon the study of the phenomenon of boredom: its dimension

will receive a specific analysis in El aroma del tiempo8, as part of the

continued Hanian research on moods. So the Stimmung, oblivious

to any will, introspection or psychologicalism, with its capacity to receive and

7
The latter is important when clarifying how the Heideggerian «there» is not an ultima ratio: as Han (2021,
43) affirms, «it neither resembles "God" nor does it feel inclination towards the "absolute"».
8
In the chapter «Deep boredom», in The aroma of time.

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to show both the manifestability of nothing —as ontological negativity— and

the strangeness of beings—ontic negativity—constitutes for Han the fundamental feature of

think. It is thus understood that the heart appears characterized as the organ of the state

of mind: the one who, in allowing himself to be challenged by being, as Han (2021b, p.313) affirms,

«keeps that everything is combined, synchronized, harmonious»: a metaphorical formula

with which to present a relationship with the ontic and its difference in which subjectivity

does not impose itself on them, trying to subsume them under a will, so as to reject
narcissistic self-referentiality in favor of a friendly relationship with a world.

The philosopher of Korean origin will defend that Heidegger, moved by modesty (Scheu9 )

contrary to the resolute will of metaphysics, it would have turned its back on the Platonic sun and

your key to pure transparency to retire to this community-friendly realm

determination: far, therefore, from divisive glances, in an effort to replace

the paradigm that congeals things into an image in favor of a relational prism

from which, affirms Han (2021b, 197) «the rigid presence is withdrawn in favor of a

vibration […] of appearance and absence». This modesty, which Heidegger (2003, 99)

presents itself as "the conductive disposition of resonance", plays a key role in the

Hanian thought, since it appears as the figure opposed to the economy and calculation.

These constitute two of the great workhorses of Han's work, which

will be presented as the defining features of Western metaphysics: paradigm to overcome

and target of his main challenges, from the criticism of all essentialism10 to the breaking down of

the subject11, going through the commitment of a radical opening to the difference

—also presented in terms such as “alterity” or “negativity”—. These three

interrelated vectors —there would be no breaking down of the subject without renouncing the

essentialism, nor relationship with otherness without disinteriorization—set the pattern both

of Heidegger's Heart as of the Hanian work: later essays will continue

9
Dina V. Picotti C. translates, in the Almagest/Biblos edition, "Scheu" as "fear", as opposed to Ciria's option
("respect"), for which we lean.
10
Foundation of his critique of Western thought as "thought of the essence [Wesen]" against the East and his
"thought of absence [Ab-wesen]", which he develops in Absence and appears in texts such as Philosophy of
Zen Buddhism, Good entertainment or Shanzai.
This question is the germ of two important developments: on the one hand, the disinteriorization of the
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subject as a sine qua non condition of a genuine relationship with otherness —be it nature, the other, the
unavailable, the unpredictable, or the divine—, which He already poses The Heart of Heidegger. On the other
hand, the end of the modern notion of subject acquires from La sociedad del cansaccio the category of
accomplished historical fact: the contemporary subject of performance, for Han (2012b, 96), "has ceased to
be a subject, since what characterizes to the subject is submission […]. Now, the subject becomes positivized;
moreover, it is released, becoming a project».

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this development from the notion of being as an intermediate sphere in which Han describes

(2018b, 135) "things lose their rigid boundaries and conform to each other", without

For this reason, it is a tidal wave of juxtapositions, since the intermediate sphere, clarifies Han

(2018b, 147), «it is not a crucible [nor] does it engender a unitary mass. rather articulates

structure" through a harmonization of identity and difference, positivity and

negativity, without the second having to be subsumed to the absolute totality of the

first. This explains the affinity with the Heideggerian notion of event —which,

collects Han (2021b, 253) «limits his doing to offering, propagating and deploying his "there", to

let everything rest in a mutual belonging"—and the oriental nothingness, whose absence of

ultima ratio would abort any possibility of structure in domain key, respecting

the full and original co-belonging. Precisely in the field of Zen Buddhism and Eastern thought, an

alternative modality of relationship with the world will be sought12,

that welcomes this interrelationship between the manifest and the veiled, identity and difference.

These investigations are the backbone of works such as Philosophy of Zen Buddhism, Absence or

Shanzai and explain the proliferation of references to the Buddhist and Oriental worldview in

Hegel and power13, Good entertainment14 or The scent of time15.

The religious and the divine are inscribed in this investigative framework of the relationship with the

otherness. Han (2021b, 133) will affirm that «the question of being is already in the first

Heidegger a preliminary question for the divine", towards which he would show in the stage

early a certain suspicion that would have been rid of in the later period. The scope of the

divine would constitute an alterity so radical that it escapes any attempt to

manipulation: thus, defends Han (2021b, 152), «in the religious feeling God does not pass

to be positive content or graspable possession of an appropriating subject». That is why the

opening to the divine, in addition to the already mentioned disinteriorization of the subject, requires

12
Despite this, Han is not an heir to the Western tradition. In the translation of the July/August issue of Literaturen
magazine (the original article is not available, but the translation can be accessed at http://www.signandsight.com/
features/2156.html) we read Han stating that , «China is nothing more than a pretext, an alternative model of thought
and of being-in-the-world». Ronald Diecker concludes from his meeting with Han that for Han "Eastern philosophy
is, in essence, a tool with which to loosen or dismantle the rigid patterns of Western thought."

13
On Hegel and power. An essay on kindness, there are interesting reflections on the Orient on p.36, footnote 4 on
p.122, as well as pp.126-131. Finally, in relation to what is stated in El corazón de Heidegger, it is worth dwelling on
the reflections on the disparate coexistence of differences on p.54 and p.148.

14
Good entertainment, the chapter «Satori».
The chapter "Scent Clock: A Brief Excursion into Ancient China" in The Smell of Time is a beautiful
fifteen

and concise section along the lines of these reflections.

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of an intentional abandonment of looking, in a process that would sweep away all relationships in

economic key: «in order to show himself», Han will conclude (2021b, 135), «the god needs to be

as intermediate space”, which brings us back to the notion of being as transit. For

On the other hand, the chapter dedicated to pain is notable, a key phenomenon to which a

detachment from the constraints of subjectivity would be inherent16 and an approach

towards the different For Han (2021b, 226), pain "designates that break in thinking,

that opening that thinking has to keep open to receive what is different and what is

unavailable". The relationship between access to alterity and the notion of being as space

intermediate meet in a quote that, due to its importance, we collect in all its

extension. Thus, Han (2021b, 255) affirms that

pain is the pain of falling, of falling into an abysmal intermediate space that cannot be
dragged to a graspable proximity that can be delimited with a fixed outline; an in-between
space that cannot be dragged into one-sided proximity; an intermediate space that tears
apart any unilateral, univocal and unequivocal denomination.

Characterized as a threshold beyond dichotomies, pain constitutes as

Such is the kind of space whose decline Han will diagnose in texts from 2010 onwards, in

the contemporary society of the promotion of the positive and the annulment of the negative.

Such is the importance that Han attaches to pain that, twenty years later, he will unite in La

palliative society17 the metaphysical analysis of pain and the perspective turned towards the social

from recent trials.

Criticism of metaphysics and proposals from Heidegger

16
The resulting subject is defined by Han (2021b, 239) as an “altruistic and suffering non-subject”.
This idea of the non-subject —deepening into the depth of subjectivity that we indicated at the
beginning of the article and that sets the tone for a good part of Hanian thought— appears referenced
in many of Han's reflections on Zen Buddhism and Eastern thought. , in essays dedicated to this
issue.
17
Pain appears here characterized by Han (2021a, 50) as difference and (2021a, 51) as reality.
Han also adds (2021a, 19) that its presence and meaning depend on power relations, which is a
good reflection of how Han analyzes early issues here (moods, relationship with otherness, pain)
from a perspective more "attached to the social", giving crucial importance to power relations. In its
pages we also find references to that "goosebumps" (as an irruption of the different) that plays an
important role in Heidegger's Heart. Finally, it is worth noting his defense of Christianity and the
narration that it provides, as when Han (2021a, 37) affirms that «the Christian narration gives pain a
language and transforms the body of mysticism into a stage. Pain deepens the relationship with
God. It creates an intimacy, an intensity", in what constitutes a departure from his early thought: Han
points out in The Heart of Heidegger the potential to disrupt narrative structures, and although from
its beginnings it shows great proximity to the religious, its adherence to the Christianity —which he
develops in Loa a la tierra— contrasts with his skepticism towards all theos in Philosophy of Zen
Buddhism.

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Radical co-determination lays the foundations for the phenomenological task: taking charge of

this interrelation between the manifest and the hidden, take a critical look at what is given to

unravel what is buried by tradition. It is not, as Heidegger himself points out,

of being turned towards things from a crude sensualism: that with which

immediately one relates constitutes what Han calls legible closeness, so

which results in Heideggerian fall and impropriety. Thus, Han (2021b, 39) subscribes

the objective of directing the gaze «to the primordial scene that is hidden "behind" the profiles of

the presence". Following the development of Heideggerian thought, this reduction of the

being to presence18 and the forgetfulness on the part of the metaphysics of the ontological difference19 would have

fostered an equally biased way of being-in-the-world that Han (2021b, 165)

summarized with a beautiful formula: "a blind talk and correspondence"; a world that

results, Heidegger defends, from the subjectivist perspective of metaphysics and the essence of

modern technique; a world lacking in depth with which there is no room for dialogue20,

guided by the provocation and location according to the mechanisms of

planning and replacement of the Gestell.

From a position of clear Nietzschean influence, Han (2021b, 82) presents the history

of metaphysics as "the history of the humiliation of the body and the sensibility", because

of a blindness towards what is close and immanent that Han intends to correct: it is explained as follows

his search for that closeness to things that representative looking overlooks.

This critique will find continuity in his immediately subsequent work: in Caras de la

death asserts Han (2020a, 18) that metaphysics would always have tried "to repress the

untimely time in favor of what is calculable and predictable", since it would be based on the

desire and would therefore lack serenity with the world: the displacement of aspects so

constitutive of existence such as otherness and difference and negativity would constitute

the result of metaphysical drift and his gaze, unable to reproduce the tonality of being

18
Han (2021b, 11): "The history of metaphysics is the history of false or deficient listening."
19
Han (2021b, 161): "[Metaphysics is] an archive of being that gathers its words but not being itself."
Heidegger (1999, 49) affirms that «[in the first half of the 19th century] existence began to slide
twenty

towards a universe lacking depth, from which the essential goes and returns to man. […] All things
ended up being located on the same plane, on a surface similar to a blind mirror, which does not
reflect, which does not return any image». The concept «resonance», central to the work of Hartmut
Rosa, would be in line with this thesis, by proposing that the inherent processes of modernity would
have configured a world that, according to Rosa (2019, 35) «withdraws and becomes unreadable
and mute [and] constitutively unavailable'. The understanding of the world from these terms
articulates the Hanian analyzes of the second decade of the 21st century: central issues such as
narcissism, the loss of beauty or the displacement of otherness move in the field of the Heideggerian
conception of modernity and of a relationship with difference whose details are exposed in the text at hand.

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in an effort, as Han describes (2021b, 139), to "corset her in the presence

representable”. The cutting and expulsion appear as essential features of metaphysics

and structures such as the narration that, in the opinion of Han (2020a, 137), «always cuts a
fragment of the immeasurable and unpredictable space of the event».

Hanian criticism recursively addresses itself, here and throughout his work, towards two

key figures of modern philosophy: Hegel and Kant. As it was for Heidegger, Hegel
proves to be an elusive contender, as both the relational perspective and the
positivity-negativity scheme have an essential role in his thinking, so
How big is the debt? However, Han finds two points at which to close the dam:

First, he argues that the projection of consciousness described in the

The Phenomenology of Spirit would produce a resistance to reality itself —we have already
Seeing how the lack of serenity/kindness/affability is a recurring criticism,
although imprecise -, which would result in the rejection of something as close as the

feelings and as far away as the abysmal lack of foundations. The economic desire
is also identified as a component of Hegelian philosophy, in which the negative
It would have no other role than its laborious submission to the identity totality. This would
be the crucial feature of the dialectic, and the reason for it is rejected at this stage21, since the

disposition towards negativity should be located, as he will affirm in Faces of death,

beyond what Han presents as any capitalization aspiration. In your turning on
around the concept of identity, the dialectic, summarizes Han (2021b, 285), «kills death
and devours the different through the process of mourning and through assimilation,

internalization, internalization, accumulation and totalization. This totalizing desire

would be motivated by a protective effort and a desire for certainty typically
metaphysical, given that, in the opinion of Han (2020a, 15), " overcoming as
Dialectical work offers total protection, total insurance against loss.

Challenges to Hegel in texts as important as Faces of Death, Death

and alterity, On power or Hegel and power, which set the tone for the essays

Although Han expressed his opposition to the dialectic between 1994 and 1998, and sharply criticized
twenty-one

Hegel between 2002 and 2006, he will shift his position towards a more nuanced one from 2010. Han
confirms this shift in Aufgerissene Blicke: Berlin-Journal, published in 2013, by the writer Ilma Rakusa. In
it, the author quotes Han, who during the exhibition "Based in Berlin", in a talk with the artist Oliver Laric,
defines himself as "a romantic and a dialectician". Han's position —and of Heideggerian root perspectives
— with respect to dialectic is an interesting question that, although it exceeds the objective of this text,
deserves to be taken into account and noted. It should be noted that it will not be Han's only turn: we have
already mentioned the role of narration or the figure of God. After all, persevering in an immovable identity
would have contravened the most essential theses of this philosopher of fluidity, mutation and otherness.

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early and sow the seeds of future developments —especially those dedicated to

the question of power, which will be specified in later texts, are based on this

criticism. Han will also point to economy and protection as main features of the

Kantian thought, for which, according to Han (2021b, 149), "the god of reason is the

supreme economic instance, without which the moral economy fails”. In Death and

otherness will dedicate an entire chapter, "Intrigues of Survival", to criticize the notion

and Kantian relationship with death, characterized by this economic perspective22, of which he will

continue to accuse Kant in later essays, until very recently23.

The contestation of the perspectives of Kant and Hegel constitutes the negative and critical face

of a thought that also offers a constructive facet: a proposal to be

in-the-world kinder to the relational nature of being and closer to things,

in terms of detachment from identity and acceptance of negativity —in the different,

unavailable, mysterious or divine. A thought tempered by the state of mind that,

according to Han (2021b, 214) «it radically questions the economy of the subject, but without installing

a trans-subjective instance of power» that would restore the economy. there is not here, for

therefore, differences of power, neither structure of subordination, nor debt, but a congregate

around a key. Those states capable of opening up to the puncture of difference

would be the aforementioned modesty, whose reception is far from the manipulative act symbolized in

the figure of the hands that grasp, annihilating the gift24; the astonishment, a grasping that,

according to Han (2021b, 174) "it does not entail a passive withdrawal, but offers a counterpart

to the astonishing [without having] that repressive access proper to "apprehension" or

comprehension""; serenity, which for Han (2021b, 210) would have «the same trait

fundamental than containment, [which is] being on the lookout”. These states/tempers

would propitiate a disinteriorization of the subject that would incorporate it into the world: it is proposed as follows:

a radical difference between this amiable disposition and the figure of narcissism, that

dominant modality of relationship with the entity that Han defines (2020a, 47-48) as that

"self clamp [for which you will also use other terms, such as "staple" or

22
Han (2018b, 64) states that «although Kant tries to purify morality from economics, from "price", however, it constantly turns towards the economic, or else
uses an economic calculation in the development of his reasoning» . 23

Han (2019b, 26) reflects that «possibly the Kantian subject does not know waiting or patience.
[…] Perhaps Kant found the uncertainty to which the peasant is exposed unbearable».
24
Also, in this regard: «When touching, the hand runs the risk of destroying the gift of calm and silence.
You have to move without touching, without feeling anything», in Han (2020a, 88); «the hand is the organ
of domination and power», in Han (2020a, 203). The hand, Han (2020a, 211) continues, would have to
"first give up its 'apprehension' in order to be inspired by and enthusiastic about things."

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"coercion"] that necessarily generates an ontological indifference towards the other». Is

proposal does not end in The Heart of Heidegger, but dominates the whole of his

work and has a specific weight in his early production: thus, in Faces of death,

Han (2020a, 74) exposes the fundamental theses that we have been describing in the

following terms:

Being cannot be reduced to being active and identical. Coercion to identity is not the
only way in which being expresses itself. Another constitution would be conceivable,
another temper of being in which a disposition to transformation, to the non-identical,
would be possible, another temper of being in which being tempered would be possible,
a temper that would lead me to assent to the other: a constitution of being tempered in
a certain way and in which the self lacked relevance.

The main lines of work are inscribed in the question between affability and narcissism

both of his early studies—in the comparative exercise of the metaphysical bases of

West and East and their respective modes of installation in the world—as well as their

subsequent essays —focused on the critique of contemporary societies—. The

Heideggerian core is evident in these two stages: in the first, in the defense of the

tension between positivity and negativity as an essential feature of being-in-the-world and the

relationship with being; in the second, in a commitment to openness to otherness and a

relationship with technology in which Serenidad 's theses resonate strongly25 .

There are two considerations as a corollary to this section. First of all, the relationship

with things proposed by Han rejects and criticizes the ascetic model: despite the component

of recollection, of reception of the divine, in the pages of The Heart of Heidegger

advocates an active relationship with the world, without getting lost in the desire to meet with the

absolute and transcendent that pursues asceticism and blinds it to the particular. in rehearsals

will insist on this point, defending that in his thought there is no escape

any of the world or ascetic program, a tendency that he will later present as

the consequence of an excess of desire26, against which we find a resolute defense

25
Heidegger (2002, 29) describes: «I would like to name this attitude that simultaneously says "yes" and "no" to
the technical world with an old word: Serenity (Gelassenheit) towards things. […] I call the attitude by which we
remain open to the meaning of the technical world the openness to mystery. Serenity towards things and
openness to mystery belong to each other. They make it possible for us to reside in the world in a very different
way.”
26
In Han (2019a, 20): "[in the face of non-desire and indifferentiation,] in its determination and obstinacy
asceticism is based on much desire." In El aroma del tiempo he will present intramundane asceticism as a
component of Calvinist Protestantism, which he will criticize for its ethics of salvation through work.
Asceticism would not stop being a projection on the world of an austere and reductive desire.

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of luxury as dislocation of what is strictly necessary27. On the other hand, Han didn't know either.

opposed to the totality, in a feature that Fredric Jameson identifies as characteristic of the

postmodern discourse28: it is not a question here of renouncing the totality, but of relating

with this from a thinking that renounces the absolutization of identity on the

difference, to the hierarchical relationship and what Han (2021b, 186) collects as «[the] comfort

theory, transparency and economic calculation.

Criticism of Heidegger

In The Heart of Heidegger it is clear that Han's relationship with the thinker of

Messkirch is from a critical continuation. There is no blind adherence here, but an effort

to purify what is identified as metaphysical remains in Heidegger's thought.

In the opinion of Han (2021b, 195, note 116), this would not have been completely freed “from the

metaphysical spell of light" —despite the aforementioned rejection of the "Platonic sun"—, which

he would have frustrated bringing his project to a genuine completion. Hanian criticism is directed

fundamentally towards Heidegger prior to Kehre, in whose existential proposal

identifies a veiled adherence to the subject, in an idealistic bias that would contaminate the

phenomenological perspective. Han (2021b, 190) affirms that in Being and time «one cannot

sidestep Heidegger's desire for an interrupted presence of the self that takes over

expressly of himself»; In the same way, the way of presenting one's own existence

from the power exerted by the self will lead Han to diagnose a lack of serenity in the face of

the world that will become recurring throughout his work. existence, as

presents in Being and time, would be characterized by what Han (2021b, 84) describes as

a "moving through the world as a double of the subject", without this meaning, clarifies the

author himself, which is suspected of narcissistic withdrawal. The turn to the position of the

Late Heidegger would have taken a decisive step in the hinge of What is metaphysics?, where

27
In this regard, the chapter "On luxury" in Good entertainment (pp.51-60).
28
Fredric Jameson (2000, 20) affirms that one of the main postmodern passwords is the desire to
"get rid of the old names, of all those abstractions that still stink of universalism or generality, to cling
even more firmly to the empirical and the real" . Han, from its Heideggerian roots, embraces a non-
absolute totality devoid of foundations and governing instances, as well as "dialectical closures". Han
hardly "holds onto" the empirical, that "readable closeness" in which we would always move and on
which a critical look should be cast. Han's relationship with postmodern thought is an interesting
question: he situates himself discreetly within it, exposes his contributions and clears up
misunderstandings about his approaches —there are interesting observations about Lyotard and his
proposal in The aroma of time—, and also points out problems and contributes solutions in this
regard: thus, Han (2020a, 2016) affirms that «As a result of the postmodern overthrow of the subject,
nature has never been paid that attention that postmodern discourse has paid to the so intrusive
"other", as if nature not formed part of what is different from reason organized by the economy of power».

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anguish, Han (2021b, 191) affirms, «communicates directly with the abyssal space of the

being, without the intermediation of finality and the hypertrophied ego». As Redondo subscribes

Sánchez (2005, 157), pointing to Han, here anguish «no longer opens the space of a

solipsistic sphere [but] opens a different voice to him, [that "silent voice of being" of

quote 15], which cannot be used to gain a foothold». But it is not the only voice towards

that Heidegger would be turned: Han (2021b, 113) will criticize that Heidegger's ear «is

surrender to an unprecedented voice, to that monstrous "voice of the people" that [...] only a few

few can hear" —pointing again, indirectly, to that lack of serenity with which

social environment—, which leads Han (2021b, 114) to wonder if "the man did not always lack

hearing of Heidegger the patience to listen to what is said around».

In subsequent essays, and following the criticism raised here, the prevalence

in Heidegger's early perspective on the anguish and death of a domain

exercised by the so-called «heroism of the self», so that in this modality of

relation to the world, Han maintains (Han, 2020a, 21) «the center of being is still occupied,

watched over and administered by the ego and maintained by its "firmness"». Since this review

understands the observation by which, for Han (2020a, 45), the Heideggerian Mitsein does not

would go beyond «an indifferent "being there participating"», which he will later define (2018b,

133) as "ultimately, the juxtaposition of an unreferenced self." But that's how it is?

When Heidegger (2007, 101) asks himself «but what temper of mind must be awakened

for us today?": Isn't there in that use of the first person plural, as you observe

Lythgoe (2014, 204) astutely “an affective disposition [with] a communal character”?

Han, of course, does not pick it up, focusing his criticism on how Heidegger's gaze

early it would still be characterized by the criticized ascetic desire.

While, on the other hand, Han (2021b, 210) affirms that in Heidegger's thought

late «waiting does not have [the] aggressive features of direct intentionality

of that "expect" that is based on the "present" that was spoken of in Being and time». In

later essays Han (2020a, 93) will reaffirm this: only in the late Heidegger,

"it will be clear the way in which existence is faced with uncertainty or in the midst of it", since

the change by which, Han (2021b, 154) describes, «the weight of the self leaves

step to the weight of the world. And anguish to serenity", without going so far as to detail what

"remains" and what is "left behind" in this important step. Finally, the image of the

night as seamstress to the stars that Heidegger presents in Serenity is cited by

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They have frequently in Heidegger's Heart, and in his relational proposal of the

kindness echo the words of Heidegger (2002, 79): «the contrada, being at the

against everything, he gathers everything, one to the other, and lets it return to himself, to his own

rest of the same». The passage from the first to the second Heidegger would be, summarizes Han

(2021b, 224), the passage from the resolution of the self "to the resolution to things"29.

Conclution

Our work leads us to conclude that Heidegger's Heart contributes, as perhaps

no other text by the author, to the understanding of the Hanian work as a whole, its

foundations and guidelines, as well as the role of Heidegger in its constitution. It's done like that

reflected in the journey that the issues raised here find, both in the

essays that followed during the first decade of the 21st century as well as in the

most recent publications —despite the concretion operated in the latter and the move to

social sphere, with the neoliberal regime and the performance society as a means in which

which the analysis takes place. Likewise, it is verified in the lace found by the

successive studies in the basic schemes exposed here —relationship with alterity in

a framework of being as relational space, kindness that "lets things be",

etc-. Finally, the development of research from the premises and

intuitions that are described here, as well as the presence of Heidegger in the terms and

the fundamental perspectives in which Hanian thought moves, account for

of the seminal character of this work, in whose light the later texts are presented as

a display that continues today.

References

Han, B.-C. (2012a) “Der Eros besiegt die Depression”, in Philosophie Magazin nº5,
Berlin: Philomagazin Verlag, pp.60-65.
Han, B.-C. (2012b) The fatigue society, Barcelona: Herder.
Han, B.-C. (2015a) The scent of time, Barcelona: Herder.
Han, B.-C. (2015b) Philosophy of Zen Buddhism, Barcelona: Herder.
Han, B.-C. (2016a) Shanzai, Buenos Aires: Black Box.
Han, B.-C. (2016b) On power, Barcelona: Herder.
Han, B.-C. (2018a) Hegel and power, Barcelona: Herder.
Han, B.-C. (2018b) Death and alterity, Barcelona: Herder.
Han, B.-C. (2019a) Absence, Buenos Aires: Black Box.
Han, B.-C. (2019b) Praise to the earth, Barcelona: Herder.
Han, B.-C. (2020a) Faces of death, Barcelona: Herder.
Han, B.-C. (2020b) The disappearance of rituals, Barcelona: Herder.

29
It would be pertinent to add: "and to being".

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Han, B.-C. (2021b) The heart of Heidegger, Barcelona: Herder.
Heidegger, M. (1999a) Fundamental concepts. summer semester course
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Jameson, F. (2000) The seeds of time, Madrid: Trotta.

Leyte, A. (2005) Heidegger, Madrid: Alliance.
Lythgoe, E. (2014) «Temples of spirit and ante-predicative foundation of the enunciative truth in
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do Vale dos Sinos, pp.198-209 .
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the theory of «finding» in Heidegger, Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca.

Rosa, H. (2019) Resonance, Buenos Aires: Katz.

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