The Korean philosopher Byung-Chul Han, who has just been awarded the Princess of Asturias award for Communication and Humanities, has been enjoying B among the general public in language countries for some years now. Popularity that began as a result of his essay La sociedad del cansancio, originally published in 2010 and translated into Spanish in 2012, and has been growing with his subsequent essays especially focused on criticizing the current neoliberal society of Western countries, a society of self-exploitation, transparency and psychopolitical regime, according to his own categories. At the same time he has generated a strong rejection in many others: his peculiar brief and cutting style, lapidary, strongly dichotomous and dialectic, with hardly any argumentation or developed analysis, prone to simplification, explains a good part of his success and also explains the harsh criticism he receives.

In reality, Han's thought is less well known than one might think at first glance. Author of 32 books to date, some of no small length, more than fifteen articles of philosophical relevance and with two other books that collect lectures, articles and interviews, his philosophical proposal is broader, complex and richer, and with a B and internal variation, than it may seem to readers who have only read some of the best-known essays, which are generally those published between 2010 and 2020. To begin with, his peculiar style of thinking and writing is enormously dense and obscure; his reflections are always articulated as commentary on the ideas of other authors, which makes his books replete with quotations and references and his own voice is often inseparable from the rest of the voices he makes appear. This basically hermeneutic and not very argumentative style makes it essential, in order to understand his analyses and proposals, to take into account the authors who explicitly or implicitly serve him as a framework and reference letter: above all Heidegger -on whom he developed his initial works-, Hegel, Derrida, Lyotard and Lévinas.

Secondly, it is not true that all his thought is centered on the critique of neoliberal capitalism, a topic that begins to take center stage in his thought from 2011, when he had already given birth to almost half of his publications. It is true that the critique of the forms of domination and the logic of calculation is absolutely central and constant since his first book, although his first works approach it from its metaphysical foundations. In the face of domination and calculation, there are two concepts that articulate his philosophical proposal from his beginnings to his last books and where the influence of Hegel is core topic: reconciliation and freedom. Although it is difficult to briefly synthesize the master line of his thought, it could be summarized as a search for the reconciliation of the human being with others and with other non-human things, with nature and with the world as a whole: the proposal of a new form or attitude of the spirit, a new logic of relating that generates an authentic community that respects plurality and otherness, a form of peaceful universal coexistence and, above all, in freedom. This master line has in Han a markedly religious and spiritual tone, inspired by Zen Buddhism in his early years and by his return to Christianity in his later years. This religious tone has become more pronounced in his latest publications, to the point that his latest book, published in 2025, is a dialogue with Simon Weil on God.

Despite the many reasons for fair criticism, Han's work, part of which has not yet been translated into Spanish, deserves to be read, understood and discussed with a broader perspective than is usually done. In this way it will be possible to discover a profound, original, suggestive and less fragmentary thought than is usually believed.