Hope, the secret weapon of philosopher Byung-Chul Han

It has been somewhat of a surprise that the famous South Korean thinker Byung-Chul Han chose hope as the theme of his latest book, set to be published on September 26. Based in Berlin, this philosopher — who writes his short works in German — is known for his criticism of capitalism and neoliberalism thanks to books such as The Burnout Society and Non-things: Upheaval in the Lifeworld. Choosing hope is a way of finding the light at the end of the tunnel, it is a feeling or vision that seems to go against the current, but one we need in order to feel alive.

But The Spirit of Hope — a book of less than 150 pages — is not the vision of a naive person who believes that, in the end, everything will just work out. It refers to a hope that is born from being proactive, since it illuminates new paths that no one is going to take for us. As the thinker suggests, hope is born precisely from despair, from negativity, but it is a compass that leads us to new situations and territories, to that which does not yet exist.

Winston Churchill, a man who was very prone to depression, said: “If you are going through hell, keep going.” This advice implies that everything, the good and the bad, is temporary, like life itself.

What kills hope, according to Byung-Chul Han, is not despair; on the contrary, despair is its starting point, the beginning of the journey. As he explains in the prelude to the book, the opposite of hope is fear. In his own words: “We go from one crisis to the next, from one catastrophe to the next, from one problem to the next. With so many problems to solve and so many crises to manage, life has been reduced to survival.” For the South Korean philosopher, living in survival mode anchors us to depression and fear, which closes doors and robs us of freedom, as it makes it impossible for us to get moving. Someone who is afraid of the future will be unable to organize and create their own future. They enter into a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy.

As Byung-Chul Han points out, the German word for fear — Angst — comes from the Latina word angustia, meaning tensity and tightness. In other words, the greater our fear, the tighter our room of action. That is why someone who is anxious feels, in one way or another, cornered.

The antidote is hope, since, in the philosopher’s own words, “it leaves us with signs and markers along the way. Hope is the only thing that makes us move forward. It gives us meaning and direction […] And actions need a horizon of meaning.” Just as fear makes things impossible, hope, as defined by the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, is a passion for the possible.

Summarizing these reflections in a practical sense, we can conclude three things:

1. To have hope is to see new possibilities. In other words, to anticipate other scenarios, even if they are far from our current situation. Byung-Chul Han quotes an Epistle to the Romans from the New Testament: “Hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for?” So there is something visionary about hope.

2. There is passive hope and proactive hope. The former puts us at the mercy of events. The latter involves working to make the new possibility materialize. In fact, the French playwright Gabriel Marcel said that hope is woven: “In the fabric of an ongoing experience […] it is embedded in an adventure that has not yet ended.” That is, it involves the process of moving toward something better.

3. Hope means assuming that everything is passing. Therefore, it is only a matter of time before we get out of a tough spot. The hopeless often believe that their situation is permanent. A depressed person convinces themselves that they will never feel better, while the person who feels that the world has turned against them believes that they are condemned for life. To escape this anguish, one must avoid taking the part for the whole. Every bad moment is just a chapter in the story. The next one can be different. With the right actions, events and circumstances will change.

The poet Emily Dickinson defined hope with this beautiful image: “Hope is the thing with feathers. That perches in the soul. And sings the tune without words. And never stops at all.”

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