Scott Beauchamp
  • Home
  • Writing
  • Contact
  • Blog
  • Home
  • Writing
  • Contact
  • Blog
An Aggregate of Last Moments

byung-chul han and the subversive power of contemplation

7/10/2018

0 Comments

 
Picture

"Contemplation is Han’s strategy for resistance to the violence of positivity that consumes the burnout society. Han takes up the late, contemplative Heidegger’s interest in Gelassenheit (“releasement”), a term he borrows from the Christian mystical tradition that means “letting things be as they are.”[17] Han also draws upon Zen, and sometimes echoes the therapeutic language of the “mindfulness” movement, but also points to resources that are specifically (if not uniquely) Christian. Most notably, he discusses the Sabbath[18] and the narrative time of the medieval calendar.[19] These are not simply days of rest or relaxation. They mark time by bringing us into close proximity to something Other (in this case God) that cannot be reduced to some consumable difference and used for our own projects. Feast days are days of Gelassenheit, an occasion for contemplation that lets God’s world be God’s. Only when we “linger” in contemplation can we find something outside of ourselves to commit ourselves to. Han argues this is an expression of love, as opposed to pornification, that is, to let Others be as they are."

Here.

(image: Chase William Merritt, Portrait of Miss Dora Wheeler, 1883; Source: Wikimedia Commons, PD-Old-100)  
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Scott Beauchamp

    Writer - Critic - Poet - Editor

    Archives

    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly