The Far East as Resource: On Byung-Chul Han’s and François Jullien’s Critical Philosophy
Main Article Content
Abstract
The turn to non-Western thought is a phenomenon among Western philosophers (such as François Jullien in France and Byung-Chul Han in Germany) in the 21st century, especially in the face of the development and expansion of neoliberal capitalism that has led to mental pathologies and ecological and financial crisis. From the late 20th century onwards, many critical social philosophers have turned to ideas from the Far East as a resource to help analyze, criticize, and find a way out of the crisis of global neoliberal capitalism. Byung-Chul Han, a Korean philosopher who teaches in Germany, has emphasized the role of Eastern philosophy, particularly in the Far East, as a resource for analyzing the global capitalist economy. Though he mobilizes the Far East as a resource for thinking, he does it differently from Jullien. This paper aims to analyze why the two thinkers, Han and Jullien, have different stances on the Far East. And to answer the question, this paper will go back to the traditions of critical theory and philosophy of ontology they differently belong to.
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Journal of TCI is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence, unless otherwise stated. Please read our Policies page for more information.
References
Althusser, L. (1984). Essays on ideology. Verso.
Anderson, P. (1976). Considerations on Western Marxism. New Left Books.
Badiou, A. (2006). Being and Event. Continuum.
Bidet, J., & Kouvelakis, S. (Eds.). (2009). Critical companion to contemporary Marxism. Haymarket Books.
Cheng, F. (1994). Empty and fall: The language of Chinese painting. Shambhala.
Chomsky, N., & Foucault, M. (2006). The Chomsky-Foucault debate: On human nature. The New Press.
Culp, A. (2016). Dark Deleuze. University of Minnesota Press.
Daston, L. (2019). Against nature. The MIT Press.
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1984). Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Continuum.
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. University of Minnesota Press.
Derrida, J. (1976). Of grammatology. John Hopkins University Press.
Descola, P. (2013). Beyond nature and culture. University of Chicago Press.
Esposito, R. (2018). Persons and things: From the body’s point of view. Polity.
Han, B.-C. (2017a). Shanzhai: Deconstruction in Chinese. The MIT Press.
Han, B.-C. (2017b). Psycho-politics: Neoliberalism and new technologies of power. Verso.
Han, B.-C. (2018). The expulsion of the other: Society, perception and communication today. Polity.
Han, B.-C. (2022). Non-things: Upheaval in the lifeworlds. Polity.
Jullien, F. (2011). The silent transformation. Seagull Books.
Jullien, F. (2012). The great image has no form, or on the nonobject through painting. The University of Chicago Press.
Jullien, F. (2014). On universal: The uniform, the common and dialogue between cultures. Polity.
Jullien, F. (2021a). Resources of Christianity. Polity.
Jullien, F. (2021b). There is no such thing as cultural identity. Polity.
Keucheyan, R. (2013). The left hemisphere: Mapping critical theory today. Verso.
Lloyd, G. E. R., & Zhao, J. J. (Eds.). (2018). Ancient Greece and China compared. Cambridge University Press.
Lukács, G. (1971). History and class consciousness: Studies in Marxist dialectics. Merlin Press.