The Human Condition by Hannah Arendt: Summery/reflection paper

Continental Political Theory
The Human Condition by Hannah Arendt: Summery/reflection paper
Terese Howard
8/30/09

Hannah Arendt boldly begins her book The Human Condition by claiming that the man-made satellite which “circled the earth according to the same laws of gravitation that swing and keep in motion the celestial bodies” (Arendt, 1) was the most important event in the modern age. With the same boldness, Arendt ends the book with a quote by Cato saying, “Never is he more active than when he does nothing, never is he less alone than when he is by himself” (Arendt, 325). In these beginning and closing statements some of the radical themes of the book can be found: the worldlessness of the self, the primacy and unpredictability action and events. Throughout this work Arendt sets forth a treatment of the human condition that is not a philosophy per say, but is philosophically and historically articulated. The human condition, not to be confused with human nature which treats humanity as a stable entity or essence, examines the state in which humans find themselves. The perspective which one has on this condition has much to do with the relative closeness or distance one has to that condition. Arendt states the project of the book as the “reconsideration of the human condition from the vantage point of our newest experiences and our most recent fears” (Arendt, 5).

Arendt focuses most of the book on the vita activa. Under the category of vita activa, Arendt designates three fundamental human activities: labor, work, and action. (Arendt, 7). These activities correspond to different given conditions of human life. “Labor is the activity which corresponds to the biological process of the human body….Work is the activity which corresponds to the unnaturalness of human existence….Action…corresponds to the human condition of plurality” (Arendt, 7). Let us consider each of these activities respectively.

Labor, as the activity which is most connected to biological life cycles, it is the most “animal” of all the activities. The common animal drive for the survival of the species is fulfilled by labor in that it “assures not only individual survival, but the life of the species” (Arendt, 8). In light of this very biologically driven commonality of labor, labor is looked down upon in the ancient world because, under Aristotelian philosophy, it is not essentially human because it is shared with other animals. That is also to say that, laboring was discredited for its connection to necessity. The “contempt for laboring, originally arising out of a passionate striving for freedom from necessity” (Arendt, 81) made labor the activity of slaves – those who had to be categorized as “non-humans” since their activity was bond up in necessity like that of animals. Slaves were distinguished from workmen because the labor or slaves was only the maintenance of necessity. Furthermore, labor was placed under work because only work creates monuments. Arendt explains that “It is indeed the mark of all laboring that it leaves nothing behind, that the result of its effort is almost as quickly consumed as the effort is spent” (Arendt, 87). The result of laboring is not a work, but consumption which then leads to the necessity of more labor and more consumption. It is the necessary condition of life itself that labor is continually being done. Labor is driven by necessity and as such “the easier that life has become in a consumers’ or laborers’ society, the more difficult it will be to remain aware of the urges of necessity by which it is driven” (Arendt, 135).

“[A]gainst the subjectivity of man stands the objectivity of the man-made world rather than the sublime indifference of untouched nature” (Arendt, 137). The activity of work deals with this objective man-made world as opposed to the nature which labor deals with. Unlike labor, work creates monuments – creations that out last consumption. Work is used not consumed and “while usage is bound to use up these objects, this end is not their destiny in the same way as destruction is the inherent end of all things for consumption. What usage wears out is durability” (Arendt, 137). Because of this durability, work has an independence of its own once it is created by a worker. Labor can transform itself into work, as is done in tilling soil where the soil becomes a “product left behind which outlasts its own activity and forms a durable addition to the human artifice” (Arendt, 138) (aka the soil). However, in this case the work can only last so long without more labor being done. The man-made world of things is all the product of work, which can simply be called work itself, which is made for use, not necessity.

Of all the activities, action is the one which is left out of the political philosophies of the ancients and most moderns, and in being left out the philosophies become contrived and continually outdated. Those political philosophies tried to create blue prints for ideal political systems, but the problems is none of these systems could take into consideration the completely unpredictable and powerful role of action, which is never bound to necessity or even causality in a traceable since. Action, as the appearance of the new, is “therefore always appears in the guise of a miracle” (Arendt, 178). Action is unique in that it “is not forced upon us by necessity, like labor, and it is not prompted by utility, like work” (Arendt, 177), but is an impulse which “springs from the beginning which came into the world when we were born and to which we respond by beginning something new on our own initiative. To act means to take initiative, to begin” (Arendt, 178). This spontaneity is accompanied by its relationship to distinct human being. It is because each human is distinct and unique that actions can be distinct and unique. It is plurality that is the condition for action and action that is the condition for plurality. In this way, action is also tied to speech as both of these are conditions of plurality. Arendt states that, “With word and deed we insert ourselves into the human world, and this insertion is like a second birth, in which we confirm and take upon ourselves the naked fact of our original physical appearance” (Arendt, 176). It is not that speech and action are two equal but separate categories, but that action is manifest as speech – speech is an irreplaceable form of action. The condition of plurality, which is fundamental to action, furthermore makes action the political condition. Arendt explains, “While all aspects of the human condition are somehow related to politics, this plurality is specifically the condition…of all political life” (Arendt, 7). Action is the most political because it is the result of “the fact that men, nor Man, live on the earth” (Arendt, 7). Only, in relationship to distinct people there is reason to speak and act.
The activities of labor, work, and action take place in both the private and public realms. The public realm is not just a realm where people coexist together, but a realm where “everything that appears…can be seen and heard by everybody and has the widest possible publicity” (Arendt, 50). This is what distinguishes the public realm from mass society. Arendt states that “what makes mass society so difficult to bear is not the number of people involved,…but the fact that the world between them has lost its power to gather them together, to relate and to separate them” (Arendt, 52). In mass society people are together but have no visibility to connect them. The transparency of the public realm is what enables it to connect people together. The public realm cannot exist without coexisting with the private, however. The private realm is not where private property exists, for property is a public concept, but where things are kept hidden. The distinction between public and private is in the possibility of showing things and keeping things hidden. In this way “mass society not only destroys the public realm but the private as well” (Arendt, 59).

A theme that is woven through this entire book is that of worldliness or worldlessness. This is present in Arendt’s obsession with outer space. Because we can now look at the earth from the perspective of the universe we begin to look at ourselves, the human condition, from this distance as well. The question then arises whether or not someday humans will no longer necessarily live on the earth. Arendt explains that “whatever enters the human world of its own accord or is drawn into it by human effort becomes part of the human condition” (Arendt, 9). But she goes on to ask if the earth is necessarily one of these things. The modern era has brought about a separation from worldliness – as seen also in modern philosophies obsession with knowledge through the self – that leaves humans without the grounding in the world they used to have. In this way, “modern men were not thrown back upon the world, but upon themselves” (Arendt, 254). Could she be influenced by Heidegger’s critique of onto-theology here – the leap into the abyss where all you have is Dasein? …Either way, the perspective of a self without a world becomes the critical perspective of modern man.

Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition, University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 1958.