A review by ammarakh
The Human Condition: Second Edition by Hannah Arendt

4.0

Political philosophy is a field with a waste sphere of influence but Hannah Arendt encompasses the whole state of modern humanity into the political realm in her highly ambiguous work The Human Condition. Any attempt to briefly state her key ideas is doomed to fail because rebelling against the traditions of modern scholarship she does not provide an overarching framework for her book while she tackles a multifarious array of ideas spanning early Greek thought, medieval philosophy, modern economics, astrophysics, and automation, to name a few. However, she is mainly concerned with the human world (which she goes into great pains to differentiate from the objective reality of earth) and loosely divides human activities into three general categories: Labor, Work and Action. She believes that the modern social or public sphere has broadened to such an extent that the notion of private life has undergone humongous transformation. For her Labor is an activity that arises out of the necessity to survive and its end products are meant to be consumed immediately as they are perishable in nature. Work, one the other hand, produces goods to be used for extended periods of time. But today the distinction between labor and work is no longer possible as everything is meant to be consumed right away. We are a society of laborers and consumers, caught up in this endless process. The only way out of this meaninglessness is through Action (which is closely connected to Thought). She explains in great detail how it is in the nature of political actions to be unpredictable but that does not mean that humans should do away with them altogether. For her it’s not mortality but natality that defines humanity because we can start anew. I cannot say it with utmost conviction that this is an essential read for those interested in philosophy. The ideas might be too disturbing, not leftist enough or even problematic for many but they invite you to reflect on human condition from a unique perspective that is even more relevant today.