Byung-Chul Han

He is an essayist and cultural critic, is deemed to be one of the most influential contemporary philosophers presently working in the West. In the 1980s he went to Germany to study philosophy, comparative literature and theology and obtained a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Freiburg with a thesis on Martin Heidegger. Since 2010, with the publication of more than twenty essays in which he has been developing his criticism of western capitalist society, he has coined terms that are now well known, as The Burnout Society (SUP, 2015) and The Transparency Society (SUP, 2015). His more recent publications are monographs on key questions of contemporary political and social debate, for example Psychopolitics (Verso, 2017), Topology of Violence (MIT Press, 2018), Was ist Macht? (Reclam, 2005), and The Expulsion of the Other (Wiley, 2018). He combines his essay writing with teaching in different German universities, including the Universität der Künste Berlin (UdK) and the Hochschule für Gestaltum (HfG) of Karlsruhe, where he lectures in cultural studies and theory of the media.