'A lingering in stillness': philosopher Byung-Chul Han on the radical power of gardening

"Cicero, the Roman Stoic, once wrote to his friend Varro, pending a visit to his home: "If you have a garden in your library, we shall have all we want." This same desire for good books and natural beauty is at the heart of Byung-Chul Han's In Praise of the Earth, in which he reflects on gardening as a form of philosophical meditation."

"In The Burnout Society, for instance, Han critiques the effects of what he calls "the achievement society", in which efficiency and a relentless drive toward self-optimisation result in feelings of despair, loneliness and exhaustion. Against the tide of self-help manuals focusing on positivity and success, he suggests "rest and contemplation are acts of resistance against a world that demands constant productivity. In pausing we reclaim our humanity.""

"Han considers contemporary concerns like burnout, the loss of attention and information overload, drawing on thinkers such as Hegel, Marx and Nietzsche to diagnose the effects of digital capitalism. As well as these canonical European thinkers, he considers the ideas of Eastern philosophers and poets like Lao Tzu and Bashō. Indeed he has written books on Zen Buddhism and the Chinese idea of shanzhai or "decreation", which disrupts the usual hierarchy between real and fake."

Gardening functions as philosophical meditation that combines appreciation of books and natural beauty. Critiques of contemporary digital capitalism emphasize burnout, attention loss, and information overload. Classical European thinkers such as Hegel, Marx and Nietzsche are used to diagnose these effects, while Eastern figures like Lao Tzu and Bashō and concepts like Zen Buddhism and shanzhai offer alternative perspectives. Rest and contemplation are presented as acts of resistance to relentless productivity and self‑optimisation, enabling pausing that reclaims humanity. Concise, portable volumes deliver incisive diagnoses of societal ills while proposing practical, contemplative ways of living, exemplified by gardening.

Read at The Conversation