The Soft Revolution

Love, Empathy and Connectedness in dialogue with Byung-Chul Han

 

 

 

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Introduction: a shared space of alienation

This essay springs from a deep existential intuition: that love is not merely a feeling, but the sustaining field of existence. In this view, empathy is not a skill, but an act of presence — a relational truth that unfolds in the space between people.

 

From my own life experience, I know: the absence of empathy is not neutral. It is highly disruptive. It fragments the Self.

 

The Korean-German philosopher Byung-Chul Han, in his sharp cultural critique, describes on a systemic level exactly what I have lived: a world where achievement, transparency, and individualization have replaced connectedness, stillness, and inner truth.

 

It is here that we meet each other: Han, the silent observer of a time that has lost its soul — I, a seeker in a world that has forgotten its heart.

 

 

 

Empathy as an act of love versus the regime of transparency

To me, empathy is an act of love: a radical presence with the other — without projection, without judgment, without the desire to control. Empathy creates a space of receptivity where truth can reveal itself.

 

Han argues, in contrast, that our culture has become obsessed with transparency. Everything must be visible, measurable, explainable. Even feelings are turned into data.

 

As Han writes: “Transparency destroys trust. It eliminates the invisible space where relationships can find shelter.”

 

When empathy is reduced to a measurable competence, it loses its ethical depth. What strikes me is how Han unmasks the culture of transparency as a culture of distrust. We no longer seek genuine closeness — we seek control. In such a world, relationality is replaced by functionality. And so empathy fades further and further from view.

 

 

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Love as a field versus the erosion of Eros

In The Return of Eros, Han argues that love has eroded — not because we desire it less, but because the system we live in undermines its very conditions. Love requires surrender, waiting, the letting go of the self. But the achievement society does not tolerate passivity or uncertainty. Everything must be immediately available, manageable, interchangeable.

 

My vision of love is essentially different. Love is not a human need, but the fundamental tone of existence — a field from which everything originates. Empathy is the sense by which we attune ourselves to that field. In this sense, love is not a sentiment, but a physical, existential field in which the relational unfolds. Just as quantum entanglement points to mutual connectedness at a subatomic level, empathy reflects an entanglement of souls that precedes separation.

 

Here, Han and I meet: love has not disappeared, but been forgotten — suffocated by a system that distrusts and systematically destroys its conditions: stillness, mystery and reciprocity.

 

 

 

The disappearance of the We: empathy as a revolutionary practice

Han analyzes how the neoliberal subject exploits itself under the guise of freedom and autonomy. We are no longer oppressed slaves, but tired entrepreneurs of the self. The We disappears. What remains is the exhausted I, locked in optimization, comparison, and loneliness.

 

Empathy disrupts this narrative. It is not a convenient skill, but an ethical summons — a reminder of who we truly are: relational beings. In a world where connection is replaced by calculation, empathy is an act of resistance. It reminds us of what no algorithm can replicate: presence.

 

Empathy is not a soft virtue. It is a revolutionary force. An act of love in a world that has rationalized love.

 

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Truth as presence versus the datafication of existence

Where I understand truth as a relational process — emerging in the tension between self and other — Han shows how truth is replaced by information. Data, statistics, visibility — these reign supreme. But what disappears is truthfulness itself. The embodied. The unspeakable.

 

For those like me, who grew up in an environment where truth was manipulated or denied, this is not an abstract issue. It is existential. For me, truth is a condition of life. Not a possession, but an open attitude. Not an answer, but a presence. And it is precisely that truth which threatens to disappear in a world that values only what is measurable.

 

Han and I meet in our rejection of the one-sided logic of information. But where he stops at analysis, I seek to preserve the memory — the memory that truth is something sacred. Something that only reveals itself in encounter.
In empathy.
In love.

 

 

 

The Metamodern turn: from diagnosis to healing

Byung-Chul Han is a master at revealing what is missing. His work is a sober, sometimes desperate elegy for what we have lost: love, eros, community, soul. But where his work lingers in melancholy, I make the leap to memory.

 

I believe we can remember what we have forgotten. That beyond acceleration and fragmentation, we can learn to listen again.

To be present.
To connect.

 

This is not an escape from the world, but a metamodern choice: to re-embody truth, empathy, and love in a time that denies them.

 

In this sense, my work complements Han — not as a counter-voice, but as a continuation. Where he points out the deficit, I ask:

 

What if love is the field that connects everything to everything else?
What if empathy is the gateway to that field?
What if we, humans, are organs of memory for that interconnectedness?

 

 

 

Conclusion: empathy as a response to a forgotten humanity

Empathy is not a social privilege, nor a soft skill. In a world that reduces truth to data, relationships to transactions and love to algorithms, empathy is the most subversive act.
It reminds us of what truly matters:

 

Not control, but presence.
Not productivity, but connection.
Not transparency, but intimacy.

 

Byung-Chul Han helps us see what has been lost. But remembering who we are — that is the work of love. And therefore of empathy.

 

Because whoever remembers that everything is connected, will never forget who they truly are.