The exhausted achievement-subject, not sovereign man, is the one who exploits himself.

Evidence

Likewise, Ehrenberg’s theory of depression overlooks the systemic violence inhabiting achievement society. For the most part, his analyses are psychological, not economic or political. Therefore, he does not observe capitalistic relations of self-exploitation in the achievement-subject’s psychic maladies. According to Ehrenberg, only the imperative to belong to oneself entails depression; depression is the pathological expression of late-modern man’s failure to become himself. Ehrenberg equates this type with Nietzsche’s “sovereign man,” but he fails to notice the identity between sovereign and homo sacer, master and slave, that actually holds. For Nietzsche, it is not “sovereign man” but the “last man” who exploits himself as his own vassal. Counter to what Ehrenberg claims, Nietzsche advanced “sovereign man” in the name of cultural criticism, as a countermodel to the exhausted achievement-subject. That is why “sovereign man” is a man of leisure [Muße]. A hyperactive person would have disgusted Nietzsche: the “strong soul” keeps “calm,” “moves slowly,” and “has an aversion to what’s too lively.” — Byung-Chul Han, The Burnout Society, 133

Categorization

• XREF: Corrects a misreading of Nietzsche — connects to reading purpose of accurately representing the argument against Foucault/Ehrenberg.

Related

• The imperative to achieve, not self-responsibility, causes burnout and depression. (similarity 0.80)
• Burnout is the pathology of voluntary self-exploitation, not lost sovereignty (similarity 0.80)
• Exploitation now occurs without domination, making freedom and compulsion coincide. (similarity 0.79)
• Depression is the self-exploiting subject’s loss of ability, an internalized war. (similarity 0.79)