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helenairui's review against another edition
4.0
Sigue siendo simplemente ensayos en los qie se centra en otros aspectos de la vida usando su teoría de la sociedad del cansancio aunque ta habia hablado y no es el primero en hacerlo sobre la capitalización del sexo y como es opuesto al amor categóricamente hacerlo. Mi parte favorita ha sido de hecho el ensayo sobre el piano pero en el que habla más bien poco y se va un poco por las ramas hablando de los no lugares la securalizacion pero a la vez sacrilizaciob de los museos qie he considerado muy interesante solo por ese ensayo se lleva las 4 estrellas
a_little_person's review
fast-paced
2.5
It is difficult for me to relate what he is saying to the practical life I see and feel. The discrepancy between these two robbes me from a useful understand going beyond a theoretical framework. Additional literature might be a cure, but my incentive to seek it out is not motivated enough.
casparb's review against another edition
4.0
I feel contemporary German philosophers don't often come my way, so Byung-Chul Han is refreshing and noticeably German, I would say (rhyme). This is a short text- somewhere between an extended essay and a book, but I think BCH is perfectly restrained in achieving what he sets out to.
In a sense, The Agony of Eros functions as an extension of Georges Bataille's Eroticism, read through Hegel and I think secularised? There is a degree to which TAOE feels a completion of Bataille's project updated with love as it is known in the present and this Hegel emphasis (with the Other, atopos more fully realised. Very nice). Han more effectively links eros to politics, through the concept of autoexploitation, which seems to arrive in this text through a negation of Foucault's notion of freedom, though I'm not entirely convinced by his critique of the above. Is the auto-exploiting body so far from Foucault's docile body? hm hm hm
So I'd recommend! Though with caution - certainly it would be good to have read Eroticism, or at least have a good familiarity of Freud's love/death drives as GB synthesised them. I think encountering Hegel enriches this text (also makes one sceptical, plausibly. I do not claim it is an impeccable reading of GWFH). A text for the era. Pair it with Badiou's In Praise of Love.
In a sense, The Agony of Eros functions as an extension of Georges Bataille's Eroticism, read through Hegel and I think secularised? There is a degree to which TAOE feels a completion of Bataille's project updated with love as it is known in the present and this Hegel emphasis (with the Other, atopos more fully realised. Very nice). Han more effectively links eros to politics, through the concept of autoexploitation, which seems to arrive in this text through a negation of Foucault's notion of freedom, though I'm not entirely convinced by his critique of the above. Is the auto-exploiting body so far from Foucault's docile body? hm hm hm
So I'd recommend! Though with caution - certainly it would be good to have read Eroticism, or at least have a good familiarity of Freud's love/death drives as GB synthesised them. I think encountering Hegel enriches this text (also makes one sceptical, plausibly. I do not claim it is an impeccable reading of GWFH). A text for the era. Pair it with Badiou's In Praise of Love.
hieronymusbotched's review against another edition
4.0
The strength of the book is the intensity and brevity of its argument.
The weakness of the book is the intensity and brevity of its argument.
I find myself agreeing with most of Han's assessments of modern afflictions - the commodification of love, the smoothing of emotional corners, the grand mediocrity of contemporary life - but for that same reason I do wish he'd spend more time with his own beliefs on the page.
All the same, not one word is a waste of your time.
The weakness of the book is the intensity and brevity of its argument.
I find myself agreeing with most of Han's assessments of modern afflictions - the commodification of love, the smoothing of emotional corners, the grand mediocrity of contemporary life - but for that same reason I do wish he'd spend more time with his own beliefs on the page.
All the same, not one word is a waste of your time.