eBook - ePub

Vita Contemplativa

Name: Vita Contemplativa
ISBN: 9781509558025

In Praise of Inactivity

Byung-Chul Han,

Daniel Steuer,

English
ePUB (mobile friendly)
Available on iOS & Android

eBook - ePub

Vita Contemplativa

In Praise of Inactivity

Byung-Chul Han,

Daniel Steuer,

About this book

In our busy and hurried lives, we are losing the ability to be inactive. Human existence becomes fully absorbed by activity – even leisure, treated as a respite from work, becomes part of the same logic. Intense life today means first of all more performance or more consumption. We have forgotten that it is precisely inactivity, which does not produce anything, that represents an intense and radiant form of life.

For Byung-Chul Han, inactivity constitutes the human. Without moments of pause or hesitation, acting deteriorates into blind action and reaction. When life follows the rule of stimulus–response and need–satisfaction, it atrophies into pure survival: naked biological life. If we lose the ability to be inactive, we begin to resemble machines that simply function. True life begins when concern for survival, for the exigencies of mere life, ends. The ultimate purpose of all human endeavour is inactivity.

In a beautifully crafted ode to the art of being still, Han shows that the current crisis in our society calls for a very different way of life: one based on the vita contemplative. He pleads for bringing our ceaseless activities to a stop and making room for the magic that happens in between. Life receives its radiance only from inactivity.

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Yes, you can access Vita Contemplativa by Byung-Chul Han, Daniel Steuer in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Philosophy & Philosophy History & Theory. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.