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Byung-Chul Han is one of the most widely read philosophers in Europe today, a member of the new generation of German thinkers that includes Markus Gabriel and Armen Avanessian. In The Agony of Eros, a bestseller in Germany, Han considers the threat to love and desire in today´s society. For Han, love requires the courage to accept self-negation for the sake of discovering the Other. In a world of fetishized individualism and technologically mediated social interaction, it is the Other that is eradicated, not the self. In today´s increasingly narcissistic society, we have come to look for love and desire within the "inferno of the same." Concise in its expression but unsparing in its insight, The Agony of Eros is an important and provocative entry in Han´s ongoing analysis of contemporary society.

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This remarkable essay, an intellectual experience of the first order, affords one of the best ways to gain full awareness of and join in one of the most pressing struggles of the day: the defense, that is to say - as Rimbaud desired it - the "reinvention" of love. - from the foreword by Alain Badiou

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Byung-Chu Han, born in Seoul, is Professor of Philosophy and Cultural Studies at the Universität der Künste Berlin (UdK) and the author of more than twenty books.

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