We are all the product of a place, that is, of a set of conditionings: our social and family background, language, history, culture, genes... And these conditionings shape our individual consciousness, its thoughts, words, actions, secrets, contradictions. A philosopher is all the more a philosopher the more he resists the coercive force the place exerts. He doesn't drink from the spirit of the age. [...] He goes and gets his inspiration where it is: far from the crowd.
via: Vasco Brondi, Una cosa spirituale (Einaudi, 2025) — Fuori luogo
Info & reflection: the force of place as coercion, and resisting it as the condition for thinking.
Attribution: uncertain. Brondi gives it as Byung-Chul Han's, but the passage can't be traced to any of his books.
Related in anthology
- Una cosa spirituale. Non fare niente, altre forme d'arte — Han in the chapter Fuori luogo: the thinker resists the coercion of place, the way Brondi's artist resists the logic of the market