The Agony of Eros

The Agony of Eros
Author :
Publisher : MIT Press
Total Pages : 76
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780262339254
ISBN-13 : 0262339250
Rating : 4/5 (54 Downloads)

Book Synopsis The Agony of Eros by : Byung-Chul Han

Download or read book The Agony of Eros written by Byung-Chul Han and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2017-03-31 with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An argument that love requires the courage to accept self-negation for the sake of discovering the Other. Byung-Chul Han is one of the most widely read philosophers in Europe today, a member of the new generation of German thinkers that includes Markus Gabriel and Armen Avanessian. In The Agony of Eros, a bestseller in Germany, Han considers the threat to love and desire in today's society. For Han, love requires the courage to accept self-negation for the sake of discovering the Other. In a world of fetishized individualism and technologically mediated social interaction, it is the Other that is eradicated, not the self. In today's increasingly narcissistic society, we have come to look for love and desire within the “inferno of the same.” Han offers a survey of the threats to Eros, drawing on a wide range of sources—Lars von Trier's film Melancholia, Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, Fifty Shades of Grey, Michel Foucault (providing a scathing critique of Foucault's valorization of power), Martin Buber, Hegel, Baudrillard, Flaubert, Barthes, Plato, and others. Han considers the “pornographication” of society, and shows how pornography profanes eros; addresses capitalism's leveling of essential differences; and discusses the politics of eros in today's “burnout society.” To be dead to love, Han argues, is to be dead to thought itself. Concise in its expression but unsparing in its insight, The Agony of Eros is an important and provocative entry in Han's ongoing analysis of contemporary society. This remarkable essay, an intellectual experience of the first order, affords one of the best ways to gain full awareness of and join in one of the most pressing struggles of the day: the defense, that is to say—as Rimbaud desired it—the “reinvention” of love. —from the foreword by Alain Badiou


The Agony of Eros Related Books

The Agony of Eros
Language: en
Pages: 76
Authors: Byung-Chul Han
Categories: Philosophy
Type: BOOK - Published: 2017-03-31 - Publisher: MIT Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

An argument that love requires the courage to accept self-negation for the sake of discovering the Other. Byung-Chul Han is one of the most widely read philosop
The Agony of Eros
Language: en
Pages: 76
Authors: Byung-Chul Han
Categories: Philosophy
Type: BOOK - Published: 2017-04-07 - Publisher: MIT Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

An argument that love requires the courage to accept self-negation for the sake of discovering the Other. Byung-Chul Han is one of the most widely read philosop
The Scent of Time
Language: en
Pages: 120
Authors: Byung-Chul Han
Categories: Philosophy
Type: BOOK - Published: 2017-09-25 - Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In his philosophical reflections on the art of lingering, acclaimed cultural theorist Byung-Chul Han argues that the value we attach today to the vita activa is
Shanzhai
Language: en
Pages: 100
Authors: Byung-Chul Han
Categories: Philosophy
Type: BOOK - Published: 2017-10-06 - Publisher: MIT Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Tracing the thread of “decreation” in Chinese thought, from constantly changing classical masterpieces to fake cell phones that are better than the original
In the Swarm
Language: en
Pages: 99
Authors: Byung-Chul Han
Categories: Philosophy
Type: BOOK - Published: 2017-04-07 - Publisher: MIT Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A prominent German thinker argues that—contrary to “Twitter Revolution” cheerleading—digital communication is destroying political discourse and politic