The Scent of Time Review | Byung-Chul Han on Time, Narrative, and Lingering

hi everyone welcome back in this video I want  to talk with you about uh the scent of time  

by bi Chan the full title of the book is the  scent of time a philosophical essay on the art  

of lingering and the book was translated  to English by Daniel stoyer published by

poy um as you might expect the book is about our  experience of time our experience in time time  

and of Time how time can have or or fail to have  certain qualities like the quality of duration and  

continuity or the quality of directedness  having direction or or lacking Direction  

the quality of just having form or lacking form  having tension uh going through tension tensions  

and releases in general the book was better  than I had expected because I was expecting  

Han to go through a series of familiar complaints  about acceleration efficiency the fetishization  

of efficiency this uh familiar phenomena that we  all know in our time the phenomena of being hyper  

busy rushing a lot but failing um to do much you  know doing very little despite the rush that we  

have and um he does touch on these themes but he  explores them in a way that is fresh and he as he  

approaches these topics he renews them he renews  the discussion and as I was reading this book I  

was reminded of another essay that I really like  by Walter Benyamin on storytelling the Lost Art of  

Storytelling I think that essay is called uh the  Storyteller and it is inspired by the the writer  

Nikolai lesov in that essay briefly Benyamin  talks about our inability to tell stories our  

lost ability for storytelling and he links that  to um not just uh you know being unable to share  

experience but the Lost value of experience as  such just think for example of the experience  

of traveling going on a trip you know in the past  a couple of generations ago you know I used to I  

remember talking my grandparents and for them  a trip when they traveled that uh involved so  

much preparation so much deliberation and a lot  of reflection and you know examination of the  

memories and retelling telling and retelling of  uh of the time spent traveling there were a lot  

of rituals around traveling people would visit  you before the trip and after the trip uh but  

now people talk about just ticking off locations  from their bucket list and at the same time that  

they are showing the result of their trip on  Instagram um we are mute and unable to talk  

about what we what we went through and you  know we have this tested understanding that  

our experience is doesn't really worth much it's  not as valuable especially the uniqueness of your  

experience that the parts that are not um immun  immediately and uh immediately understandable  

or understandable in advance the the part that  you were not planning for anyways let's uh leave  

that behind I might talk about Benjamin's essay at  some future point but I would recommend that even  

more than uh the cent of time hun uh discusses  the concept of narrative uh similarly narrative  

narrativization and historical structuring of time  and on the other side Den narrativization which  

isn't just about loss of meaning and loss of a big  picture that um gives a place for our individual  

experiences particular experiences and events life  events Den narrativization is um also about the  

sheer loss of continuity the sense of continuity  a sense of duration losing a kind of continued  

presence that only a narrative and a sense of  History gives us uh in general what happens  

when narrative is absent in many ways absence of a  narrative is like absence of uh Safeguard with the  

narrative some events have higher regard higher  priority higher significance than others and some  

other events go into the background and they're  pushed aside they're ignored you can safely ignore  

them according to that narrative structure  so a narrative can really guard us guard our  

attention in a consumerist society of course to be  a good consumer we should be able to pay attention  

to lots and lots of different things without  narrative that to to to be there to guard us we  

have short attention spans we are impatient we are  unable to rest to linger in a moment in a linger  

in front of a work of art or in front of a friend  or in a conversation when we don't understand  

something without that narrative structure to  justify lingering when we don't understand a  

work of art or a text the default position is to  just move on Han considers the the root of our  

problem the problematic relationship with time  and uh he sees that to be about more than just  

acceleration itself and a hyper Ral drive towards  efficiency he says that acceleration is itself an  

effect not a cause it stems from submitting  to a kind of logic that then necessitates  

acceleration like submitting to the logic of Labor  submitting to the logic that regards you as only  

a laborer a worker a productive agent agent of  productivity uh as somebody who's supposed to  

constantly look for shortcuts look for uh Optimum  izing processes of production using time as means  

to an end especially when that end uh is not  really related to who you are who we are and  

I would add here in passing the logic of mistrust  mistrust over time and how uh the other person is  

using time in relation to us just think about a  contract for example the effect of acceleration  

is also related to atomizing ization of time  the division of time and uh making time into  

Point like moments and the atomization of time is  really um it comes from loss of sense of History  

narrative and loss of a sense of self um we will  get back to that when we are reading about and  

from haiger um just as an example if you want to  see an example of Storytelling and structuring of  

time I would recommend reading Henry fielding's  book big book Tom Tom Jones when I was finished  

reading this work I was really filled with a  sense of calm I felt for a couple of days at  

least that I didn't have to rush I didn't need  to rush to do something else to do to perform  

another task to pick up another book and read it  it quickly and that's because the way uh the book  

like this structures time for us structures  are experience the way it feels time that it  

shows time is not just something we have but it's  something that we are it's a it's it's our medium  

of expression it's our medium of existence so I  think uh Henry Fielding Henry fielding's Tom Jones  

is an excellent example of um thinking through  what Han is writing about this uh the story The  

Narrative threads they create create narrative  tension which is uh something that hunt writes  

about narrative tension captivating the reader  emphasizing the importance of process path history  

that this character Tom Jones or his relationships  they need to go through this particular path which  

takes a particular ular amount of time that uh  resist shortcut resist summarization summary and  

uh you need to to go through this process it's  not just about the destination this concept of  

tension release detour digression necessary  digressions and returning to the main line  

of narrative uh Fielding writes about how like  when he has a digression when he goes and pays  

attention to some secondary characters he says  I can't wait to get back to my main characters  

especially two of the main characters that are  at the center of the story and you feel that  

that the joy of return you want to go to the main  characters and see what is happening with them and  

similarly with the main characters you might know  you might anticipate what they might end up what  

position they might end up in in terms of moral  character development or moral development but  

you also recognize with Fielding that there is  no shortcut there and if there's a shortcut that  

would lose the essence of the story as a way of  giving form to time as a way of giving form to the  

characters themselves to the selves Han contrasts  uh towards the end especially towards the second  

half and explicitly in the the Final Chapter  he contrasts the active life of Labor with the  

contemplative life Vita Activa Vita contemplativa  and he shows that you cannot work your way into a  

life of leisure you cannot work hard and work and  so hard that you get to that final destination of  

the contemplative life it doesn't work that way  just think of the experience of not knowing what  

to do on the holidays or hearing from others say  that they don't know how to feel their time it's  

a terrible symptom an active life even if you are  active even if you are working we are laboring it  

has to be against the background uh it has to be  charged by the spirit of contemplation it has to  

happen against the background of contemplation a  contemplative life um that is uh that is viewed  

as more important that is recognized as more  important a part of us that is recognized is  

more significant more uh related to who we are  what we are and when we act that action um has to  

be a kind of action that is capable of hesitation  we have to become kinds of actors that are able  

to hesitate able to pause able to deliberate and  reconsider and rethink our actions and that means  

having distance or being able to create a distance  or live in a distance between the time you think  

of doing something you plan to do something and  when you actually execute when you actually act  

that hesitation by the way Han doesn't talk  about this I don't recall he he talking about  

this but that hesitation is essentially among  other things it is also an anti-authoritarian  

uh position to be in if you don't um hesitate  if you're not your self able to hesitate if we  

cannot pause we might look for people who also  don't pause who also don't hesitate and in fact  

they embody this archetype of the alpha male  super super confident charismatic individual  

a charismatic leader who never reconsiders their  position who never hesitates and we see that as a  

good quality we see that as a virtue mistakenly  but um recognizing that that's a bad quality in  

other people that's a dangerous quality in leaders  uh requires I think to also cultivate a different  

set of qualities in ourselves to become able to  contemplate to hesitate to pause to deliberate  

okay I want to read a little bit from this chapter  I know the video is long but it's okay let's uh  

let's practice let's try to practice the art  of lingering so I want to read a little bit  

first from just some selections from chapter  nine which is uh called the round Dance of the

world in 1927 what happened in 27 1927 if  you are a student of philosophy uh this  

might be associated in your mind to the year  uh Being and Time was published but uh another  

book was published in this year and that is  the the last volume in the series in Search  

of Lost time uh so here we read in 1927  Lam retro time regained was published in  

Paris the same year saw the publication  of haider's being and time in Germany  

like PR's project on time being on time sets  itself against the increasing disintegration  

of human existence against the decay of  time into a mere sequence of pointlike

presences the temporal experience of the day this  is referring to heer's dasman day the conformist  

Loosely uh the temporal experience of the day  corresponds exactly to the cinematographic time  

which according to PR characterizes the age  of haste the day is is so little interested  

in the matter in question that as soon as it  catches side of it it already is looking for  

the next thing haiger realizes early on that  the emptiness of being goes hand inand with the  

acceleration of life in his lecture course of  19293 he says quoting heiger why do we find no  

meaning for ourselves anymore that is no essential  possibility of being is it because an indifference  

yawns at us out of all things an indifference  whose grounds we do not know yet who can speak  

in such a way when World World Trade technology  and the economy seize hold of man and keep him

moving why do we have no time heiger continues  why do we have no time to what extent do we  

not wish to lose any time because we need it  and wish to use it for what for our everyday  

occupations to which we have long since  become enslaved this not having any time  

is ultimately a greater being lost of the  self than that wasting time which leaves  

itself time that's when you waste time  that that act is leaving itself sometime

then uh later on Han writes the age of haste  is an age of dispersion one more passage from  

uh page 64 Han writes history as directed  time protects time against Decay against  

its dispersion into pure sequence of point-like  presences in this it is the self that provides the  

direction the constancy of the self this essence  of authentic historicity is duration which does  

not pass it does not elapse the one who exists  authentically has time always so to speak you  

can think of duration as continuity as well okay  um I also wanted to read from page 109 a short

passage without rest human beings are incapable of  seeing what is at rest so being being is always a  

form of the subject is always a way of relating  to the world and it's corresponding to a a world  

a form of a form that the world takes making the  Vita Activa an absolute value drives everything  

out of life that is not an act or activity the  general time pressures destroy all that has a  

character of a detour all that is indirect and  thus makes the world poor in form every form  

every figure is a detour and remember here figure  um in the sense that leotard uses it anyways back  

to Han if language is deprived of what is indirect  in it its nature approaches that of a dream or an  

order friendliness and politeness are also based  on Theus and indirect respect again you can you  

might recall Hun's discussion in the transparency  Society his discussions of respect indirectness  

distance um okay yeah I have more to say on this  but um um let's not extend the the length of the  

video anymore um thank you for for watching if  you have read this book I'd love to hear your  

thoughts and otherwise uh take care of yourselves  have a good weekend and I'll talk to you next time