New Book Announcement: “Absence: On the Culture and Philosophy of the Far East” by Byung-Chul Han

Absence: On the Culture and Philosophy of the Far East, Byung-Chul Han, Daniel Steuer (trans) (Polity, March 2023)
Absence: On the Culture and Philosophy of the Far East, Byung-Chul Han, Daniel Steuer (trans) (Polity, March 2023)

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 centered not on essence but on absence. The difference between essence and absence is the difference between being and path, between dwelling and wandering.

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.

 

Absence: On the Culture and Philosophy of the Far East
by Byung-Chul Han, translated by Daniel Steuer
Polity, March 2023