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4.07 AVERAGE
4.07 AVERAGE
challenging
informative
slow-paced
I would need much more background knowledge in philosophy to understand this because it was too dense for me to get much of the point. I would also need to learn French, German, Greek, and Italian to understand the lengthy untranslated quotes she uses. The part I understood best (the science) was also riddled with factual errors, so not convinced it's worth it.
On the cusp of 3.5-4 Stars
I found myself really connecting to some of the ideas Arendt presented, but I also disagreed at times? It’s definitely a higher level work, and I read this for my university class so it makes sense, but I don’t agree with how inaccessible it is when it’s supposed to be analyzing the common human condition of all people. Not a bad read though, on an analytical note.
I found myself really connecting to some of the ideas Arendt presented, but I also disagreed at times? It’s definitely a higher level work, and I read this for my university class so it makes sense, but I don’t agree with how inaccessible it is when it’s supposed to be analyzing the common human condition of all people. Not a bad read though, on an analytical note.
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
informative
slow-paced
”Power is actualized only where word and deed have not parted company, where words are not empty and deeds not brutal, where words are not used to veil intentions but to disclose realities, and deeds are not used to violate and destroy but to establish relations and create new realities.”
This was a doozy of a read. As I am only just beginning to pick up books weighed down with dense academic language, Arendt’s work on the way humans interact with their internal world, and the world around them, was quite challenging, but not excessively so.
”It [tyranny] develops the germs of it’s own destruction the moment it comes into existence.”
Despite its 1958 copyright (at one point I giggled at Arendt’s description on how far astronomy had come, knowing that she had published this book over 10 years before the moon landing) every point she made seemed to age like fine wine. The way she describes the dynamics behind power, politics, gender, race, forgiveness, and labor (she rips hustle culture a new one decades before the coining of the phrase hustle culture) are just as applicable today. One excellent example of this is a quote that especially stuck out to me as a U.S. citizen living in the time of the abused filibuster.
”Power can be divided without decreasing it, and the interplay of powers with their checks and balances is even liable to generate more power, so long, at least, as the interplay is alive and has not resulted in a stalemate.”
I really hope that everything she encourages about swinging the pendulum of work and labor back to the middle comes to pass. I think the historical account within this book gave me some hope for a what a more beautiful future could look like. Only time may tell.
This was a doozy of a read. As I am only just beginning to pick up books weighed down with dense academic language, Arendt’s work on the way humans interact with their internal world, and the world around them, was quite challenging, but not excessively so.
”It [tyranny] develops the germs of it’s own destruction the moment it comes into existence.”
Despite its 1958 copyright (at one point I giggled at Arendt’s description on how far astronomy had come, knowing that she had published this book over 10 years before the moon landing) every point she made seemed to age like fine wine. The way she describes the dynamics behind power, politics, gender, race, forgiveness, and labor (she rips hustle culture a new one decades before the coining of the phrase hustle culture) are just as applicable today. One excellent example of this is a quote that especially stuck out to me as a U.S. citizen living in the time of the abused filibuster.
”Power can be divided without decreasing it, and the interplay of powers with their checks and balances is even liable to generate more power, so long, at least, as the interplay is alive and has not resulted in a stalemate.”
I really hope that everything she encourages about swinging the pendulum of work and labor back to the middle comes to pass. I think the historical account within this book gave me some hope for a what a more beautiful future could look like. Only time may tell.
Finally read in entirety, one of my favourite books by a favored philosopher
"Human" is too universal a term for what Arendt is doing here, starting with Greeks and Romans and then working through the big changes in European thought that add up to Modernism. There were some moments in the final chapter that were intriguing but all that Plato, Aristotle and the rest of 'em just felt like a misguided attempt at the "master's tools." I had brief flashes of, gee, maybe I should learn these ancient philosophy words, but if anything this book made me want to get even further away from all these cats she references and explore non-Western philosophy and feminist philosophy. I mean, all the stuff she has in here about "animal laborans" and absolutely nothing about the personal being political even in Ancient Rome or wherever was a big disappointment. You'd almost think she was agreeing with Aristotle and others on the merits of slavery and hierarchy. Glad to be done with it.
informative
I have to tell you the truth: I just can never finish this book. I'm a little disappointed in myself. There is something kind of comforting though about always having more, because when you are done with The Human Condition, what is left?