Byung-Chul Han's 'La salvezza del bello' Diagnoses Digital Age's Aesthetic Crisis

In 'La salvezza del bello' (Nottetempo, 2019), philosopher Byung-Chul Han argues that digital culture has stripped beauty of its transformative power, reducing it to passive consumption. The book traces Western thought on beauty from Plato to Adorno, warning that aestheticization and polished images sedate perception, creating an 'an-aesthetic' condition. Han contends that beauty must provoke and transform, not merely please, citing Rilke's 'Archaic Torso of Apollo' as a call to change one's life. The crisis lies in beauty being reduced to use and consumption, whereas true artistic beauty resists consumption and saves the other. Translated by Vittorio Tamaro, the 109-page essay offers a remedy for existential disorientation and spatial-temporal irritation, recommended for aesthetes, philosophers, and artists.