‘Vita Contemplativa’ by Byung-Chul Han

Having read several of Byung-Chul Han’s small philosophical books, I was eager to read his Vita Contemplativa: In Praise of Inactivity (see on Amazon). For readers looking for practical guidance on implementing a contemplative practice or reading an intellectual history of contemplation, this book will surely disappoint. Instead, it gives us philosophical provocations rather than practical instruction, which aligns nicely with one of his book’s main points: culture and life become interesting and “radiant” when they rise above the demands of utility and production in contemporary society.

My third encounter with Han’s work, reading Vita Contemplativa has shown me that Han is consistent and covers arguments and themes he has already addressed in previous books. Reading his body of work is comforting because it is familiar, and it helps us understand his larger philosophical project. Reading many of his works is necessary in Byung-Chul Han’s case because he (frustratingly) doesn’t pin down some of his ideas. Yet, somehow, Han’s reluctance to define aligns nicely with what I understand to be the main argument of Vita Contemplativa.

Han’s book begins with a diagnosis that will be familiar to readers of The Burnout Society: contemporary society has reduced human existence to work and performance. We have become animal laborans, mere beasts of burden who confuse living with survival. As such, we are unable to recognize anything other than activity as anything other than a problem. Han argues for a return to what he calls the vita contemplativa, which I understand to be a mode of being and living that embraces pause, rest, stillness, silence, and contemplation as essential human capacities (and, as we will see, directly related to human culture and flourishing).

Moreover, as he pointed out in The Burnout Society, what contemporary society dismisses as the passive “contemplative life” (vita contemplativa) is actually quite active, requiring sustained effort to resist the “crowding, intrusive stimuli” of modern life.

Han argues that the empire of work and productivity has colonized even our understanding of rest. He writes that “leisure time” remains “tied to the logic of work,” conceptually defined as absence rather than presence. This makes sense to me, as the word “vacation,” first used in English by Chaucer, was originally defined as time when someone was not working. In the Wife of Bath’s Prologue, Chaucer writes:

When he had leisure and vacation / From other worldly occupation / To read this book of wicked wives…

The etymology of the word “vacation” suggests that our understanding of rest and leisure has long been defined negatively: in the empty absence of work, action, and doing. Rest is defined by what it lacks rather than what it offers. A vacation is literally an “emptiness.” It becomes “down time,” time that we “kill,” rather than time that might fulfill, awaken, or enliven us.

Yet, for Han, down time, contemplation, leisure, and rest are important in a variety of ways: they are the wellspring of human flourishing and culture, they give our lives radiance/immanence, and they are sacred.

Drawing connections between cultural production and human flourishing, Han argues that culture itself springs from a kind of inactivity. He celebrates atelic activities (perhaps “activities” isn’t the right word), ones without ends or goals in mind, ones that are “useless and purposeless” like dancing, strolling, playing music, and creating art. We often think of these pursuits as the expressive essence of the human experience. They are, in short, what make us distinctly human.

Artistic, atelic practices like the ones mentioned above often involve flow states where “the will abdicates” and the practitioner “succumbs to what happens” rather than consciously acting upon an artistic medium. Yet I’m not sure I am convinced by Han’s argument that creative pursuits are not “active” because in them we surrender ourselves to some kind of transcendent inspiration or creative energy. Not all creativity involves our surrender to some creative force that is wholly outside ourselves.

But I get Han’s larger point, that what we consider to be important cultural expressions — thinking, art, culture, festivals, rituals — often stand in combative opposition to notions of active production.

In one interesting section, Han again draws a distinction between language as information and language as poetry. Useful and productive activity is different from creative activity in Han’s view: “information is the active form of language. Poetry, by contrast, suspends language as information. In poetry, language enters the mode of contemplation. It becomes inactive.” Information is language’s active equivalent; poetry is language’s contemplative equivalent.

I find this interesting, especially in light of a recent Robert Macfarlane interview. Macfarlane, he says, doesn’t want to write books that “capture” or “explain.” He doesn’t want to write dry books of facts. Instead, he wants to draw on poetic forms. And I think this is why we are drawn to Macfarlane’s writing. It is poetic and radiant. Han says, “when language is nothing but work and the production of information, it loses its radiance.”

Han focuses on inactivity because it gives life “radiance” or “immanence,” two terms that I understand to mean something like “meaning” or “fulfillment.” Frustratingly, Han doesn’t unpack what he means by the terms.

Yet if I feel anxious about Han’s ambiguous approach, his hesitation to explain, his propensity to skirt and flitter around ideas language without offering clear definitions, then perhaps I am missing one of Han’s points. That my wanting something carefully packaged and clear might be a symptom of the current age’s unease with lingering, ambiguity, and contemplation. Offering digestible “information” might betray his philosophy.

Thus the book’s value lies in its ability to force us into contemplation and ambiguity. Han’s vision of festivals, rituals, and contemplative practices as essential to human flourishing is also an interesting take, one with which I fully agree. Vita Contemplativa reveals something interesting about our contemporary predicament — that many of us have become beasts of burden and no longer are human beings. Survival is not the same thing as living. What we dismiss as “unproductive” — rest, contemplation, culture, play — may be exactly what we need to recover our humanity.

As Han observes, drawing from Cato:

Never is he more active than when he does nothing, never is he less alone than when he is by himself.