The Human Condition
Hannah Arendt's phenomenological-political analysis of labour, work, and action
Tradition: Twentieth-century political philosophy / Arendt's post-totalitarian thought
Labour, work, action — three distinct activities of the vita activa, and the modern reduction of action to making
The Human Condition is Arendt's most philosophically systematic work, developing the vita activa — the active life — through three distinct activities: labour (the cyclical reproductive activity that sustains biological life), work (the fabrication of durable objects), and action (speech and deed in the public realm with other persons). Arendt argues that modernity has progressively reduced action — the distinctively human activity that creates new beginnings in the public realm — to labour and to making, producing the political pathologies of the twentieth century. The work has shaped twentieth-century political philosophy, especially deliberative-democracy theory (Habermas) and republican political theory (Pettit, Honig).
Author
Editions cited
- The Human Condition (Chicago, 2nd ed. 1998, introduction by Margaret Canovan)
School Embodiments
Arendt studied with Husserl, Heidegger, and Jaspers; her phenomenological method is recognisable throughout The Human Condition.
"To live an entirely private life means above all to be deprived of things essential to a truly human life." (Human Condition ch. 2)
Arendt is a robust political realist — the public realm is a real human achievement with real conditions, real fragility, and real dangers.
"Action, the only activity that goes on directly between men without the intermediary of things or matter, corresponds to the human condition of plurality." (Human Condition, Prologue)
Arendt's working method is empirical-historical and analytical; institutions are evaluated by what they actually produce for human plurality.
"Politics is based on the fact of human plurality." (Human Condition, Prologue)
Arendt's analysis of action as the human capacity for new beginnings has existentialist resonance with the analysis of human freedom.
"To act, in its most general sense, means to take an initiative, to begin." (Human Condition §24)
Arendt's doctoral dissertation was on Augustine's concept of love; her later philosophy of natality (the human capacity to begin) draws on Augustinian theology.
"With each birth something uniquely new comes into the world." (Human Condition §24)
Arendt's analysis of political action and the public realm has been engaged by liberation theology and twentieth-century theological political theory.
"The miracle of action is rooted in natality." (Human Condition §24)
Arendt's analytical method — distinguishing real causally distinct human activities — is recognisably critical-realist in spirit, though she would not have used the label.
"Labour, work, and action are equally fundamental because each corresponds to one of the basic conditions under which life on earth has been given to man." (Human Condition, Prologue)
A more distant relationship: Arendt's emphasis on action as event has process-philosophical resonance.
"Action establishes relationships." (Human Condition §25)
Arendt's engagement with Christian theology — especially Augustine's anthropology — places her on the border of philosophical-theological humanism.
"That a beginning be made man was created, said Augustine." (Human Condition §24, citing City of God 12.20)
Internal Tensions
Arendt's sharp distinctions between labour, work, and action have been criticised as too rigid (her treatment of labour as merely biological is one of the principal targets) and defended as analytically productive. Her relationship to her teacher Heidegger — philosophical, personal, and politically fraught — is the central biographical question.
I. Time
Real political time of the public realm. Natality — the human capacity for genuine new beginnings — is the temporal core of Arendt's philosophy.
Attributes
II. Space
The public realm is a real, spatially located human achievement. Substantival.
Attributes
III. Matter
Labour engages biological matter; work fabricates durable objects. Material reality is the substrate of the lower activities.
Attributes
IV. Observer
The Arendtian observer is the human person in plurality — embodied, active in the public realm, capable of natality (new beginnings).
Attributes
V. Energy
Not engaged directly.
Attributes
VI. Information
The historical record of action — the stories told about the deeds of human beings — preserves human plurality across time.
Attributes
Personas that cite this work
Personas with the nearest attribute fingerprint
Historical figures whose own classification on the same six-dimensional grid lands closest to this work's. Computed by attribute-agreement on coordinates both address.
Computed school proximity
The work's attribute fingerprint scored against all schools using the same quiz scorer. Useful as a sanity check on the hand-curated embodiments above.
How The Human Condition resolves each dilemma
51 resolved positions across 4 dimensions, including 3 distinctive where the majority of schools go the other way · 6 unaligned.
Each dimension is sorted so minority positions come first. Mainstream positions are folded into an expandable list.
Time · 9 dilemmas · 3 distinctive
Persistence, the future, and the direction of becoming.