Absence E-Book

Byung-Chul Han

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 171

Beschreibung

Western thinking has long been dominated by essence, by a preoccupation with that which dwells in itself and delimits itself from the other. By contrast, Far Eastern thought is centred not on essence but on Absence. The fundamental topos of Far Eastern thinking is not being but 'the way' (dao), which lacks the solidity and fixedness of essence. The difference between essence and Absence is the difference between being and path, between dwelling and wandering. 'A Zen monk should be without fixed abode, like the clouds, and without fixed support, like water', said the Japanese Zen master Dogen. Drawing on this fundamental distinction between essence and Absence, Byung-Chul Han explores the differences between Western and Far Eastern philosophy, aesthetics, architecture and art, shedding fresh light on a culture of Absence that may at first sight appear strange and unfamiliar to those in the West whose ways of thinking have been shaped for centuries by the preoccupation with essence.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Epigraph

Notes

Preface

Notes

Essencing and Absencing – Living Nowhere

Notes

Closed and Open – Spaces of Absencing

Notes

Light and Shadow – The Aesthetics of Absencing

Notes

Knowledge and Daftness – On the Way to Paradise

Notes

Land and Sea – Strategies of Thinking

Notes

Doing and Happening – Beyond Active and Passive

Notes

Greeting and Bowing – Friendliness

Notes

End User License Agreement

List of Illustrations

Closed and Open – Spaces of Absencing

Illustration 1

. Yosa Buson (1716–1784), Pine Tree Forest in Karasaki, Edo period, about 1771.

Illustration 2

. A Japanese city. In Jean-François Defrère, Japan, Bruxelles: Artis-Historia, 19…

Illustration 3

. The Daisenin Garden in the Daitoku-ji temple complex in Kyoto. In J. N. Leonard,…

Illustration 4

. Living room in the Katsura Imperial Villa. In Heinrich Engel, The Japanese House…

Light and Shadow – The Aesthetics of Absencing

Illustration 5

. Ying Yü-Chien, A Mountain Village in Fog (China, thirteenth century), Yoshikawa …

Illustration 6

. Gerrit van Honthorst (1592–1656), St. Peter Released from Prison, around 1616/16…

Illustration 7

. Jan Vermeer van Delft (1632–1675), Young Woman with a Water Pitcher, about 1662,…

Illustration 8

. From Teiji Itō, Alte Häuser in Japan, ed. and with photography by Yukio Futagawa…

Illustration 9

. Ma Gongxian (thirteenth century), Li Ao and Yaoshan Weiyan are debating, woodcut…

Illustration 10

. Rock garden in the Ryōgen’in temple. In Mizuno Katsuhiko, The Gardens of Kyoto: …

Illustration 11

. Empress doll. In Sadao Hibi, Japanese Tradition in Color & Form, Tokyo: Graphic …

Illustration 12

. The actor Kanze Motomasa in the Noh drama Yugao. In Mildred Friedman (ed.), Toky…

Doing and Happening – Beyond Active and Passive

Illustration 13

. Torii Kiyonaga (1752–1815), woodcut of Murasaki Shikibu, authoress of the The Ta…

Illustration 14

. Sesshū Tōyō (1420–1506), Haboku Landscape, around 1481, woodcut.

Greeting and Bowing – Friendliness

Illustration 15

. Isobel Crombie, Shashin: Nineteenth-Century Japanese Studio Photography, Melbour…

Illustration 16

. Klaus Eisele (ed.), Japan, Stuttgart: Rob Bonte, 2003, no. 113. © Klaus Eisele.

Guide

Cover

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Epigraph

Preface

Begin Reading

End User License Agreement

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Absence

On the Culture and Philosophy of the Far East

Byung-Chul Han

Translated by Daniel Steuer

polity

Originally published in German as Abwesen: Zur Kultur und Philosophie des fernen Ostens © Merve Verlag, 2007

This English edition © Polity Press, 2023

Excerpt from Berlin Childhood around 1900 by Walter Benjamin, translated by Howard Eiland, Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copyright © 2006 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Excerpt from Phantasien der Wiederholung by Peter Handke © Suhrkamp Verlag Frankfurt am Main 1983. All rights reserved by and controlled through Suhrkamp Verlag Berlin.

Excerpt from Silence: Lectures and Writings © 1961 by John Cage, page 191.Published by Wesleyan University Press. Used by permission.

Polity Press65 Bridge StreetCambridge CB2 1UR, UK

Polity Press111 River StreetHoboken, NJ 07030, USA

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-4621-3

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022945469

The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.

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The story comes from China, and tells of an old painter who invited friends to see his newest picture. This picture showed a park and a narrow footpath that ran along a stream and through a grove of trees, culminating at the door of a little cottage in the background. When the painter’s friends, however, looked around for the painter, they saw that he was gone – that he was in the picture. There, he followed the little path that led to the door, paused before it quite still, turned, smiled, and disappeared through the narrow opening.

Walter Benjamin, Berlin Childhood around 19001

Notes

1.

Walter Benjamin,

Berlin Childhood around 1900

, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006, p. 134.

PREFACE

For a long time, the West either violently excluded or appropriated the foreign. The foreign had no presence within what was proper to the West. And today? Is there still something like the foreign? It is currently fashionable to believe that everyone is somehow like everyone else. In this way, the foreign again disappears from what is considered as proper to the West. Maybe it would not be a disadvantage to believe that there is a country ‘where anyone who says “I” is immediately swallowed up by the earth’.1 It is salutary to maintain a space for the foreign. It is an expression of friendliness that makes it possible to become other to oneself. This book presents a foreign culture, a culture of absencing that will appear rather astounding to the inhabitants of the occidental culture, which is centred on essence.

Notes

1.

Elias Canetti, The Secret

Heart of the Clock: Notes, Aphorisms, Fragments 1973–1985

, New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1989, p. 129.

Essencing and Absencing – Living Nowhere

A good wanderer leaves no trace.1

Laozi, Daodejing

The original meanings of the German word ‘Wesen’ (Old High German wesan) [essence], interestingly, were ‘to linger in one place’, ‘stay’, ‘household matters’, ‘dwelling’ and ‘duration’. Vesta, the Roman goddess of the hearth, home and family, has the same etymological root. Essence refers to house and household, to ownership and property, to what endures and is solid. Essence is abode. The house shelters possessions and belongings. The inwardness of the house is inherent in essence. The Greek word ‘ousia’, which Aristotle uses for ‘essence’, also originally means property, estate [Anwesen] and land holdings. The concept of ‘essence’, which unites identity, duration and inwardness, dwelling, lingering and possessing, dominates occidental metaphysics. For Plato, the beautiful is the identical, the unchanging, the enduring. It is ‘itself by itself with itself, it is always one in form’.2 Plato’s

Eros, who strives for divine beauty, is the son of Poros. The plural form of Poros also means intake and money. Poros, literally ‘the way’, is meant to lead to possession. This goal-directed way is fully absorbed by the intention to possess. When it does not lead to unambiguous possession, the situation becomes a-poretic. Because of his father, Plato says, Eros is himself an ‘awesome hunter’.3 Power and possession animate him. Being, to him, means desire.

Essence is substance. It subsists. It is the unchanging that withstands change by persisting in itself as itself and thereby differs from everything else. The Latin verb substare, from which ‘substance’ is derived, means among other things ‘withstand’. And stare is also used in the sense of ‘to assert oneself’. On the strength of its substantiveness, on the strength of its essentiality, the one withstands the other, asserts itself. Substantiveness is steadfastness, a determination to be oneself. Only the one who has a secure, solid foothold, who solidly stands by him- or herself, can also withstand the other. Essence is the self-same, which dwells in itself and thus delimits itself from the other. Essence or substance is characterized by a striving towards itself. The Greek notion of hypostasis means not only essence and foundation but also withstanding and steadfastness. And stasis, apart from standing, stand or standing place, also means revolt, discord and strife. According to its origins, essence is therefore anything but friendly. Only what is fully determined to be itself, what solidly stands by itself, what permanently dwells in itself – that is, what has the inwardness of essence – can enter into a conflict, into strife with the other. Without the determination to be oneself, which is the fundamental trait of essence, no strife is possible. Only the one who is able fully to stay within him- or herself even inside the other can have power. The figure of essence prefigures power. Because of this prefiguration, a culture, or thinking, that takes its cue from essence must necessarily develop a determination to be oneself that finds expression in the desire for power and possession.

In his Monadology, Leibniz rigorously draws out the ultimate consequences of the concept of substance.4 The ‘monad’ represents this rigorous coming to a head and completion of essence. The monad dwells wholly in itself. There is no exchange with the outside. Thus, monads ‘have no windows through which something can enter or leave’.5 This total closure corresponds to the absolute inwardness of the windowless house. The monad’s only impulse is its striving towards itself, self-affection, the affect towards itself, namely ‘appetition’. The inner life of the monad is guided simply by ‘appetite’, that is, ‘perception’.6 The monad is a ‘mirror of the universe’,7 but it does not mirror the universe by abandoning itself to the things. Rather, the monad represents or expresses the universe. The monad is not passive but active or expressive, that is, ex-pressing. Leibniz’s soul, as a ‘living mirror’, is a place of desiring.8 The universe is simply an object of its ‘appetition’. The monad perceives the universe because it has an appetite for it. It is this appetite alone that gives the world an independent being. Existence [Dasein] is desire. Without desire there is nothing. Thus, ‘nothing is simpler and easier than something’, than existence.9 In order to exist, a striving, an effort, is required: ‘Itaque dici potest Omne possibile Existiturire.’ [‘Thus every possible can be said to strive to exist.’]10 The verbum desiderativum ‘Existiturire’ (wanting to be) signifies the ‘conatus ad Existentiam’ [striving towards existence]. What is present is characterized by exigency in its presencing; that is, it wants. It is the soul that animates existence to exigency. The ground of existence is exigency. The ground of being is wanting, which then, in particular in the modern age, takes the form of wanting oneself. Wanting, or even liking, itself, everything present must accomplish [erwirken] itself.

Heidegger, despite his efforts at leaving metaphysical thinking behind, and despite always seeking to get closer to Far Eastern thinking, remained a philosopher of essence, of the house and of dwelling. Although he retreated from quite a few of the intellectual patterns of metaphysics, the figure of ‘essence’ still dominated his thinking. Heidegger uses the term ‘essence’ almost excessively. The fundamental traits of essence, such as having a solid foothold, steadfastness, selfhood and duration, appear in various guises in his writings. Expressions like ‘steadfastness’, ‘resoluteness of self’ [Entschlossenheit zu sich], ‘constancy of self’ or ‘self-constancy’ dominate the vocabulary of his analysis of Dasein. He also connects strife and essence: ‘In essential strife … the opponents raise each other into the self-assertion [Selbstbehauptung] of their essences.’11

As pointed out above, the dimension of strife (stasis) inheres in particular in the Greek idea of essence as hypostasis. Both the figure of strife and that of dialogue, frequently used by Heidegger, presuppose a bearer of essence, someone who presences [einen An-wesenden], that is, a person or individual who has a stand or standpoint, who is identical with him- or herself and stays the same. Those involved must properly be presencing [eigens an-wesend sein]. According to Heidegger, love consists in helping the other achieve his or her ‘essence’: ‘Found the love! Probably the deepest interpretation of love is expressed in Augustine’s word that says “amo volo ut sis”, I love, that is, I want what I love to be what it is. Love is letting be in the deep sense in which it calls forth the essence.’12

Etymologically, the Chinese sign for being (you, 有) represents a hand that holds a piece of meat. You also means ‘having’ and ‘possessing’. However, being as exigency, as appetition, does not dominate Chinese thinking. Quite the opposite – it is enthusiastically devoted to fasting. Daoist thinking makes use of a number of negations in order to express that, fundamentally, existence is not an exigency, not an insistence, not a dwelling. The wise man ‘wanders where there is nothing at all’ (you yu wu you, 遊於無有).13 Zhuangzi also speaks of wandering ‘in simplicity’ (you yu dan, 遊於淡).14 Laozi also uses the ‘not’ (wu, 無) for negating ‘essence’ (wu, 物). The ‘not a thing’, the non-essence (wu wu, 無物) – we can say the ab-sencing [Ab-wesen] – evades all substantive determination.15 It is consistent with this fact that non-essence is associated with wandering, with not-dwelling. The wise man wanders where there is ‘no door and no house’ (wu men wu fang, 無門無房).16 He is compared to a quail that has no nest, that is, no home. He is ‘a bird in flight that leaves no trail behind’ (niao xing er wu ji, 鳥行而無跡).17 The Daoist wandering is certainly not fully identical with the Buddhist ‘non-dwelling’ (wu zhu, 無住), but the negativity of absencing connects the two.18 The Japanese Zen master Dōgen also teaches nowhere-dwelling: ‘A Zen monk should be without fixed abode, like the clouds, and without fixed support, like water.’19

The good wanderer leaves no trace (shan xing wu zhe ji, 善行無轍跡). A trace points in a particular direction, and it points to an actor and his intention. Laozi’s wanderer, by contrast, does not pursue any intention, and he does not go to any place. He walks in the ‘directionless’ (wu fang, 無方).20 He completely fuses with the way, which does not lead to anywhere. Traces are created only in being. The fundamental topos of Far Eastern thinking is not being but the way (dao, 道). The way lacks the solidity of being and essence, which is what leads to the emergence of traces. There is no teleology to force it to follow a linear path. The dao is not a poros. Thus, it is freed of the possibility of possession and of the impossibility of the aporetic. This difference between being and path, between dwelling and wandering, between essence [Wesen] and absencing [Abwesen], is critical, and all of its consequences must be spelled out. As opposed to being, the way does not permit any substantive closure. As it is endlessly processual, it does not allow anything to subsist, insist or persist. It therefore does not allow any fixed essences to come about. A soul insists. It consists of traces, so to speak. Absencing effaces it. In this effacing consists emptiness. Zhuangzi describes the wandering in absencing as follows: ‘Already my will is vacant and blank. I go nowhere and don’t know how far I’ve gotten. I go and come and don’t know where to stop. I’ve already been there and back, and I don’t know when the journey is done.’21

The wanderer dwells nowhere. The figure who recommends to Tian Gen – ‘Heaven’s Ground’ – who is seeking his advice, to wander in non-being, is called ‘Wu Ming’ (無 名, literally the ‘nameless’).22 A name turns you into a someone in the strong sense. The wise man, by contrast, is nameless (sheng ren wu ming, 聖人無名).23 He has ‘no self’ (wu ji, 無 己, or wu wo 無我).24 This topos of absence is to be found not only in Daoism but also in Confucius. In Lunyu it says: ‘The master was without self.’ The way the negation of the self is expressed in this case is unusual: the particle for negation, wu (毋), which always precedes a verb, here precedes the self and thereby negates it. Confucius did not self. He made nothing the content of his self.

From a certain perspective, in Chinese, being, that is, you, the hand that holds a piece of meat, is something quite prosaic. In order to exist, it seems to say, all that is needed is a piece of meat. Nurturing oneself is a prosaic act. As such, it has no exigency. It lacks the insistence of desiring. Zhuangzi even counts clothing oneself and eating among the natural virtues that human beings need to practice.25 The belly (fu, 腹) does not desire. Desiring is based on the drawing of distinctions.26 What desires is not the belly but the discriminating taste that strives for something specific (wei, 味). Laozi demands: ‘Empty the heart (xu qi xin, 虛其心), and fill the belly (shi qi fu, 實其腹). Weaken the will (ruo qi zhi, 弱其志), and strengthen the bones (qiang qi gu, 強其骨).’27

Merely to be sated and strong is certainly not a Daoist ideal. ‘Belly’ and ‘bones’ are here being used in figurative senses. They are organs of in-difference. Daoism does not pursue an ascetic ideal; having an empty heart does not categorically exclude having a full belly. With its determination and doggedness, asceticism is based to a large extent on desire. For this reason, Zhuangzi distances himself from ascetics and hermits. Bones are given another figurative sense in section 55 of the Daodejing, where the wise man is compared to a newborn child whose bones are ‘supple’ (ruo, 弱) and whose sinews are ‘soft’ (rou, 柔).28 The weakness of the bones and softness of the sinews are opposed to the steadfastness of the essence that withstands and resists the other. Laozi might even have said: the wise man is without bones, like water.

In section 12 of the Daodejing the belly also figures as a non-desiring, non-distinguishing organ:

The five colours turn a man’s eyes blind;

The five notes turn a man’s ears deaf;

The five tastes turn a man’s palate dull;

…

For this reason,

The ruling of the Sage is by the belly not by the eyes.29

This statement by Laozi is reminiscent of a provocative saying of the Zen master Linji: ‘When you get hungry, eat your rice; / when you get sleepy, close your eyes. / Fools may laugh at me, / but wise men will know what I mean.’30 And in Dōgen’s Shobogenzo it says: ‘In general, in the house of the Buddhist patriarchs, [drinking] tea and [eating] meals are everyday life itself.’31

Being – and on this point, at least, Laozi would agree with Leibniz – is more exhausting than non-being. Someone who exhausts himself, who struggles, remains in the realm of being. Non-being, the subtle and wondrous (miao, 妙), reveals itself only in ‘non-struggling’ (bu qin, 不勤). Emptiness, xu (虛), absencing, turns a someone into a no one. No one is conspicuous by their absence. Zhuangzi uses not only xu but also kong (空) to signify the emptying absencing:

Bright Dazzlement [Guang Yau