Byung-Chul Han, Vita Contemplativa: In Praise of Inactivity. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2025; 128pp. ISBN: 978-1509558018
Reviewed by Avah Solomon & Robin Barrios, University of Ottawa
In Vita Contemplativa (2022), a work of timely relevance to the frantic busyness and blind action that seem to dominate the status quo, Byung-Chul Han draws from a diverse range of philosophical and artistic traditions to critique neoliberal performance society. This critique is underlined by what Han identifies as an incompatibility between the ceaseless demands of digital-era capitalism and the spiritual and contemplative needs of the human being. More specifically, Han argues that neoliberalism deprives humans of necessary moments of respite and relaxation, which leads to a crisis in human life that requires a new way of living. For Han, this new way is the Vita Contemplativa—the life of inactivity, stillness, and, naturally, contemplation.
Characteristic of his works, Han is less interested in rigorous exegetical argumentation than he is in a more poetic exploration of being, weaving together philosophical accounts with reflections, observations, and juxtapositions meant to expose truths about our modern condition. Hence, while Hans begins Vita Contemplativa with a diagnosis of the status quo of neoliberal performance society and a synthesis of thought on the question of inactivity, he ultimately turns, in the second half of the book, towards a Heideggerian critique of Hannah Arendt’s “The Human Condition” and its glorification of action and labor.
The Chapter One, “Views of Inactivity,” conceptualizes inactivity as subjugated by the stimulus-response paradigm of capitalist relations of production, a paradigm that transmutes all lived time into a potential resource, eliminating all time freed from the logic of work. As Han puts it “[w]hen life follows the rule of stimulus-response, need-satisfaction and goal-action, it atrophies into pure survival: naked biological life” (2). This emphasis on goals is problematic insofar as genuine contemplative and symbolic behaviour transpires, Han argues, only in the absence of goal-oriented logic. For example, it is this logic of thoughtless, rushed action “in which everything is short term, short of breath and short-sighted” that Han sees at work in humanity’s destructive relations with nature (10). Invoking the teachings of Taoist philosopher Zhuangzi, Han cautions against human interference with nature, advocating for an inactive approach devoid of compulsion, which allows the world to remain within the realm of potentiality rather than availability. This perspective, characteristic of Taoist philosophy, is juxtaposed to the philosophy of action found in the work of Hannah Arendt’s The Human Condition (1958). Han critiques the “greatness and dignity” (32) Arendt ascribes to action, which is often performed heedless of consequences. In contrast to Arendt, Han praises Heidegger’s notion of reflective Dasein, since “[u]nlike action, which pushes forward, reflection leads us back to where we always already are” (33). He sees Dasein as resisting the constant availability of life as action, which thereby works to preserve life as potentiality. In fact, Han underscores the way in which Heidegger’s later works reveal an existence manifested whole through inactivity, evoking awe and humility before nature. Digitization, he contends, threatens this existence of reflective Dasein, since when time is organized under the capitalist model of consumption and achievement, we lose the sense of narrative that defines us as animal narrans and are lost to data and information. Moreover, love and community, the sustaining forces of being, cannot thrive in a system of self-referential solitude, and Han follows Heidegger in seeing Theoria, or contemplation, as purposeful and restful seeing: cultivating a relationship with the world that celebrates and admires. Rest, writes Han in “The Pathos of Action,” is the essence of creation (61). He invokes both Plato and Heidegger to critique Arendt’s vision of the polis for its lack of contemplation and draws on Kierkegaard and Nietzsche to condemn the “pathos of the new” in Arendt’s work. In contrast to this pathos, Han evokes the Greek daimon: a commitment to not knowing and “a day-bright mysticism” (79) that repudiates action’s entanglement with time. Without contemplation, Han contends, the Vita Activa dissolves into hyperactivity, and life becomes that of the animal laborans rather than the animal narrans.
Proposing a solution to the problems he finds in Arendt’s thought, Han sees Romanticism as an alternative to the Vita Activa. He argues that action, rooted in the achievement model, rejects a universal view of the world, as action, in Hölderlin’s Romantic estimation, has “separated [us] from nature, and what once, as one may well believe, was one, is now in opposition with itself” (Hölderlin, qtd. 89). Romanticism, in contrast to Arendt, perceives the numinous aspect of nature that unites it with being. “Nature,” Han writes, “opens the eyes of the subject that thinks itself free and sovereign, giving it the ability to look. The genuinely Romantic moment occurs when, in the face of nature, the subject abandons its sovereignty and begins to weep” (90). This coming society echoes the radical universalist ideals of Novalis, “animated by a longing for reconciliation and harmony, by the idea of eternal peace” (94). Where nothing stands alone, all is entangled in nature, beauty, and mystery. While Han concludes that digitization has profaned and atomized such living connections, hope lies in a coming society, enlivened by contemplation, where nature is ultimately reconciled with itself.
Han’s critiques of the violence perpetrated by the restless, action-driven data machine of the digital age are among the most well-received of the past twenty years. Vita Contemplativa remains faithful to Han’s Romantic and universalist vision, weaving together analogy, aphorism, and a plethora of philosophical traditions. Han does not pursue a thorough investigation of such thinkers, nor does he attempt to construct a rigorous system. He opts instead to allow the contributions of philosophers such as Heidegger, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, and Benjamin to coexist within his theoretical mosaic. This approach makes his work accessible to those less familiar with the philosophical traditions he draws from, avoiding contradictions and appealing to a broader audience. The diversity of thought from which Han draws is also remarkable: Han’s familiarity with Eastern philosophical traditions potentially introduces novel concepts to his predominantly European audience, proposing a harmonious synthesis with the German tradition that is aided by Heidegger’s own engagement with Eastern thought. Han espouses the German Romantic notion of the importance of a strong human relationship with nature. This view—contextualized in the 21st century where the accelerated progress of exploitative capitalist ventures has effected unfathomable harm upon the planet—reframes acting against nature as inherently anti-human, leading to a disharmony which disrupts the unity of the whole. This perspective is expounded rather powerfully throughout Vita Contemplativa.
Despite its many merits, the brevity of Vita Contemplativa renders Han’s philosophical project somewhat incomplete. The concluding lines of Han’s essay present the ideal world of the Vita Contemplativa: the realm of peace. However, the project lacks a mechanism that realistically explains the end of the “storm [of] progress” (30) and the neoliberal capitalist machine, bringing humanity into a new world without “separation, division and estrangement” (98). Any emancipatory potential declared by Han, therefore, seems relegated to fantasy, as Han’s ideal world is ushered in only following some radical change or almost divine intervention: an “angel of inactivity” (33) that miraculously and inexplicably challenges the “now.” In the present, Han positions us at the end of history: trapped in capitalism between a past lost to digital society, and a possible future realm of peace. This is due to Han’s reluctance to engage with the political dimension of the change deemed necessary by his essay, despite having identified the political and economic roots of the philosophical crises he problematizes. Han correctly diagnoses that “[u]nder capitalist relations of production, inactivity returns in the form of an encapsulated outside” (2), but he cannot describe how this lost inactivity might manifest at large into “a community of the living” (95). Moreover, Han’s fundamental dichotomy of positivity vs. negativity is methodologically applied to a number of issues throughout the essay as possibility/capacity, new/old, acting/reflecting, sameness/otherness, and so on. This liberal employment of dualisms once more suspends Han’s attempt at emancipation; despite a few attempts to balance action and contemplation, as “[a]ctivity and inactivity relate to one another like light and shadow” (38) and the technological conditions in which we exist are such that “[m]achine intelligence…knows neither light nor shadow. It is transparent” (38). Thus, with neither the reconciliation nor the transition between these binarisms expounded upon, the Vita Contemplativa appears in total opposition to digital society, with little application beyond the change of individual practices. However, Han’s Heideggerian influence elucidates his political ambiguity, or perhaps, even his resignation to the neoliberal political order: the themes of Vita Contemplativa are intended to be transpolitical, appealing to a Dasein which can guide itself towards authenticity and contemplation as it rejects the “everydayness” of digital capitalism. This is the individual Dasein “who—in acting—explicitly takes responsibility for his own self” (42).
Despite these unresolved contradictions, Han’s more accessible style of writing introduces technocriticism to a diverse audience. His analysis of the relationship between nature and technology continues in the tradition of Debord, Baudrillard, and McLuhan. New technology, in both Han and McLuhan’s estimations, forever alters perceptions, thus affecting our relationship to the surrounding world. Decades after McLuhan posits “[t]he medium is the message,” Han writes in Vita Contemplativa that “[a] new medium means revolution” (76). The digital age poses a number of questions which necessitate philosophical exploration; mediums must, therefore, be understood not simply as tools, but as extensions of humanity itself. Hyperreal digital performance society demands a type of action and perception of the world that stands at odds with Han’s Heideggerian concept of being, as such, readers could benefit from the Romantic and Taoist perspective that Han develops. For Han, understanding new mediums not simply as tools, but as extensions of humanity itself, provides the contemplative basis for a life that does not lend itself to restless action. Vita Contemplativa would be recommended to those interested in a concise philosophical exploration of action and contemplation in the digital age, who are looking to avoid the more rigorous prose that is typical of the discipline. No specific academic background is required for understanding the essay, rendering it accessible across disciplines to anybody with an interest in Continental philosophy and Critical Theory. Vita Contemplativa provides a timely reflection on the barrelling pace of capital and technology, alongside an insistence on the importance of inactivity.