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4.07 AVERAGE
4.07 AVERAGE
Arendt writes The Human Condition against the background of humanity’s newest experiences and fears, namely the scientific discoveries of her day and the ones she anticipates will be made in the future. As examples she names space travel and genetic engineering. The new experiences, temptations and dangers these and other scientific-technological developments pose (despite science’s promising and self-evident rewards and virtues) necessitate the need for a revival of the power of political thinking, lest we lose complete control over scientific discoveries and new technological inventions. If that happens, there will be a gap between science’s possibilities and dangers and our ability to take responsible action accordingly. Every new scientific discovery, she writes, must lead to political questioning and thinking and then: “The question is only if whether we wish to use our new scientific and technical knowledge in this direction, and this question cannot be decided by scientific means, it is a political question of the first order”
In The human Condition, Arendt offers a philosophy on what characterizes human activity, or in other words: the active life of humans; viva activa. She arrives at a trichotomy by distinguishing between labor, work and action and she gives a historical-philosophical overview of these very different, though partially overlapping forms of human activity and subjects them to a hierarchy, in the above mentioned order. Labor, she says, is a bodily activity characterized by a cyclical loop (that we also see in nature) of production and consumption. It is the type of activity we need to constantly repeat in order to stay alive and sustain ourselves. With Christianity, it was labor that came to be glorified (work to the sweat of your brow), as this toilsome was seen as a good way to exercise one’s faith (which is also why Max Weber (1864 – 1920) believed the protestant ethic to be very fertile ground for the rise of capitalism). With the rise of modernity (which is traditionally traced back to the Enlightenment) labor came to be glorified for other reasons. When John Locke (1632 – 1704) argued we inherit the earth from God and that we own all the land that we work upon, a new way of thinking about property was introduced. Labor came to be glorified, because labor creates property. With the philosophy of Adam Smith (1723 – 1790), the idea of wealth was introduced. Labor, Smith therefore argued, is valuable since it can accumulate property to the point it makes a growth in wealth possible.
This, according to Arendt, marks the start of a society of laborers, in which we are now living. A laboring society, she argues, is one that concerns itself mainly with pro duction and consumption, and where labor is valued as the highest, most sophisticated and significant form of human activity. This is a reversal of Ancient Greek values, where labor and economics were seen as a means to an end, namely the freedom to politically participate. With the rise of liberal-economic philosophies of the likes of Locke and Smith, politics is now a means to an end; namely a means for acquiring more effective, productive labor and hence more economic growth.
The second human activity is work. This is the type of activity where human beings make objects with their hands that have a (relative) durable quality. With it, they add to the human artifice by creating objects that can complement it. Work is typified by its adherence to an instrumental rationality, or in other words, an means-to-an-end mentality. With work, the means justify the ends. Its goal typically is to control nature and man through the making of artefacts, or objects.
Finally, there’s action. Action is a political form of activity that is determined by the human capacity to begin something new, to initiate something through speech and deeds and the free exchange of thought about what direction or goal speech and deeds should have. In order to realize this, certain conditions must be met. First of all, there needs to be a community that is based on plurality where human beings can meet each other as equals in their uniqueness and distinctiveness. In our action we express who we are, as unique beings. This also means that others have to be accepted in their other-ness, lest there be no exclusion, which eliminates man, not in the literal sense of the word, but qua man. Secondly the ability to think is a requisite. People need to be able to think in terms of reflection, which Arendt sees as an inner dialogue. Only when people are able to do this, can they have dialogues with other people. Thinking for Arendt is not a skill that is to be mastered, nor is it an activity that should only be aimed at understanding and controlling the world around us. For her, thinking is a moral ability, a virtue that can help us become better people, since it helps to develop our moral imagination. Part of our moral imagination for her should be the ability to think about the consequences of our actions on other people, meaning we should be able to morally imagine the lifeworld of the Other, but in terms of empathy, but in terms of understanding (which in psychology is called cognitive empathy). Action, finally, is only possible when we surround ourselves with other humans, so the state of being in action is that of inter-esse, being between others. Since we are between others, we exist within a web of relations. Because of this quality, the consequences of action are always largely unpredictable, since it sets in motion a chain of consequences from which we can never clearly ascertain what affects others - living and dead - have had on us and neither what kind of effects our actions will have on the others we share our world with. This resonates with what Einstein said: “Every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving.” This means that when an individual initiates something, there’s always a dependency on others, and the initiator always taps into something that preceded her action. For Arendt, the unwillingness to think, can lead to great evils. Thoughtlessness, leads to what she called ‘the banality of evil’, the committing of evil deeds without even thinking about one’s deeds and its consequences. What also should be prevented at all cost, is making people redundant, which reduces them to a form of human waste. It is for this reason that what Arendt proposes “is very simple: it is nothing more than to think about what we are doing.”
In The human Condition, Arendt offers a philosophy on what characterizes human activity, or in other words: the active life of humans; viva activa. She arrives at a trichotomy by distinguishing between labor, work and action and she gives a historical-philosophical overview of these very different, though partially overlapping forms of human activity and subjects them to a hierarchy, in the above mentioned order. Labor, she says, is a bodily activity characterized by a cyclical loop (that we also see in nature) of production and consumption. It is the type of activity we need to constantly repeat in order to stay alive and sustain ourselves. With Christianity, it was labor that came to be glorified (work to the sweat of your brow), as this toilsome was seen as a good way to exercise one’s faith (which is also why Max Weber (1864 – 1920) believed the protestant ethic to be very fertile ground for the rise of capitalism). With the rise of modernity (which is traditionally traced back to the Enlightenment) labor came to be glorified for other reasons. When John Locke (1632 – 1704) argued we inherit the earth from God and that we own all the land that we work upon, a new way of thinking about property was introduced. Labor came to be glorified, because labor creates property. With the philosophy of Adam Smith (1723 – 1790), the idea of wealth was introduced. Labor, Smith therefore argued, is valuable since it can accumulate property to the point it makes a growth in wealth possible.
This, according to Arendt, marks the start of a society of laborers, in which we are now living. A laboring society, she argues, is one that concerns itself mainly with pro duction and consumption, and where labor is valued as the highest, most sophisticated and significant form of human activity. This is a reversal of Ancient Greek values, where labor and economics were seen as a means to an end, namely the freedom to politically participate. With the rise of liberal-economic philosophies of the likes of Locke and Smith, politics is now a means to an end; namely a means for acquiring more effective, productive labor and hence more economic growth.
The second human activity is work. This is the type of activity where human beings make objects with their hands that have a (relative) durable quality. With it, they add to the human artifice by creating objects that can complement it. Work is typified by its adherence to an instrumental rationality, or in other words, an means-to-an-end mentality. With work, the means justify the ends. Its goal typically is to control nature and man through the making of artefacts, or objects.
Finally, there’s action. Action is a political form of activity that is determined by the human capacity to begin something new, to initiate something through speech and deeds and the free exchange of thought about what direction or goal speech and deeds should have. In order to realize this, certain conditions must be met. First of all, there needs to be a community that is based on plurality where human beings can meet each other as equals in their uniqueness and distinctiveness. In our action we express who we are, as unique beings. This also means that others have to be accepted in their other-ness, lest there be no exclusion, which eliminates man, not in the literal sense of the word, but qua man. Secondly the ability to think is a requisite. People need to be able to think in terms of reflection, which Arendt sees as an inner dialogue. Only when people are able to do this, can they have dialogues with other people. Thinking for Arendt is not a skill that is to be mastered, nor is it an activity that should only be aimed at understanding and controlling the world around us. For her, thinking is a moral ability, a virtue that can help us become better people, since it helps to develop our moral imagination. Part of our moral imagination for her should be the ability to think about the consequences of our actions on other people, meaning we should be able to morally imagine the lifeworld of the Other, but in terms of empathy, but in terms of understanding (which in psychology is called cognitive empathy). Action, finally, is only possible when we surround ourselves with other humans, so the state of being in action is that of inter-esse, being between others. Since we are between others, we exist within a web of relations. Because of this quality, the consequences of action are always largely unpredictable, since it sets in motion a chain of consequences from which we can never clearly ascertain what affects others - living and dead - have had on us and neither what kind of effects our actions will have on the others we share our world with. This resonates with what Einstein said: “Every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving.” This means that when an individual initiates something, there’s always a dependency on others, and the initiator always taps into something that preceded her action. For Arendt, the unwillingness to think, can lead to great evils. Thoughtlessness, leads to what she called ‘the banality of evil’, the committing of evil deeds without even thinking about one’s deeds and its consequences. What also should be prevented at all cost, is making people redundant, which reduces them to a form of human waste. It is for this reason that what Arendt proposes “is very simple: it is nothing more than to think about what we are doing.”
“Plurality is the condition of human action because we are all the same, that is, human, in such a way that nobody is ever the same as anyone else who ever lived, lives, or will live.”
challenging
informative
slow-paced
5 stars for literary quality, probably three and a half in terms of content, but a valuable book
Lots of insight, a bit of a slog to read. Dense with a lot of insider and Arendt-ian terminology.
Dense but good. Arendt is one of the most important philosophers in the modern age.
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
Some part of this (the second part on private household/public realm and the fourth one on action) felt absolutely brilliant and I couldn’t stop scribbling in the margins and underlining sentences twice. In other parts, it felt repetitive and slow and unclear; her concepts are so hard to grasp and apply to history, too.
I read this, or tried to, when I was 20 years old. It was completely over my head. It was assigned in a 400-level religious studies class at Indiana University which was also over my head. The class met in a pub and I was slightly intoxicated most of the time. That may not have helped my comprehension, but the prof had known Hannah Arendt personally, and he told us, "She would have approved. She preferred hard liquor and could drink more than most mortals."