Our individual mortality stands in stark contrast to nature: each individual man has a personality and a life story, whereas all of the other creatures of the earth are not differentiated from each other and exist in a life cycle that is in harmony with nature. Consider natality, or the new beginning inherent in the miracle of birth, because of the capacity that a newcomer has to begin something new, to mortality, or the metaphysical condition that each individual person will perish from the earth. To her, the viva activa is broken up into three activities: i) Labor, the activity devoted to maintaining our physical bodies, ii) Work, the activities used to construct an "unnatural" world of things, and iii) Action, activity between humans without material intermediaries.Īrendt connects these three activities to the broader human conditions of birth and death, symbolized by a series of contrasts. She contrasts the life of the Ancient Greek polis to our contemporary society. And I may lose motivation partway through, hit "publish" and stop wasting my breath on this book.Īrendt's object is to characterize the viva activa, the active life (as opposed to the viva contemplativa of philosphers) as it has been practiced throughout Western history. But it may not be as detailed as my previous entries. Yet, I promised myself that I would write a review of it, so I must carry on. I've already read the book, I have a middling response to it, and I want to move on. Writing about Hannah Arendt's The Human Condition is quite a deal harder because it is sometimes very stupid, and sometimes illuminating. Writing about The Red and the Black and The Myth of Sisyphus was easy for me, because I had such an intense response to them. A classic in political and social theory, The Human Condition is a work that has proved both timeless and perpetually timely.I find it easy to write about books I love. This new edition, published to coincide with the fortieth anniversary of its original publication, contains an improved and expanded index and a new introduction by noted Arendt scholar Margaret Canovan which incisively analyzes the book’s argument and examines its present relevance. The problems Arendt identified then-diminishing human agency and political freedom, the paradox that as human powers increase through technological and humanistic inquiry, we are less equipped to control the consequences of our actions-continue to confront us today. In her study of the state of modern humanity, Hannah Arendt considers humankind from the perspective of the actions of which it is capable. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958.Ī work of striking originality bursting with unexpected insights, The Human Condition is in many respects more relevant now than when it first appeared in 1958.
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