“The Human Condition” by Hannah Arendt

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The ability to understand the surrounding realities can be driven by the ability to distinguish, classify and categorize different concepts known through human history. Examining a familiar aspect from different perspectives might result in reassessing the established theories and views on the main bases of the society.

An example of such an approach can be seen in the work “The Human Condition” (1958) by Hannah Arendt which is a “more controversial way of challenging contemporary truisms.” (Arendt)

In her work, Arendt draws distinctions among various known aspects such as labor, work, and action in a different perspective. This paper analyzes the aforementioned work based on Arendt’s distinctions.

Hannah Arendt created an original concept of politics as the highest form of human activity and the highest expression of his freedom. For that purpose, she considered the relation of three notions, i.e. work, labor, and activity.

Labor is an eternally recurring activity, which reproduces objects of consumption, where “the life process of mankind, and within its frame of reference all things become objects of consumption.”(Arendt 89)

Labor is predefined by the biological need of humans, like any other natural being,

laboring always moves in the same circle, which is prescribed by the biological process of the living organism and the end of its “toil and trouble” comes only with the death of this organism. (Arendt 98)

Arendt addressed the third chapter for labor, which can be considered as the strongest both emotionally and intellectually. In that sense, it can be said that this chapter is the core of the book, for which the book in general along with other chapters was written as its explanation.

In that chapter, Arendt rose against the European glorification of labor by depreciating it. Labor is the lowest appreciated type of human activity, which strips humans from their humanness, where “a being laboring in complete solitude would not be human but an animal laborans in the word’s most literal significance.” (Arendt 22)

In Arendt’s interpretation, labor is not work in the usual understanding. It is not the creation of material welfare regardless of the purposes that they serve. Arendt sharply contrasts labor and work, and although labor eventually also creates something, the created by labor is different from the created by work.

Labor creates products of consumption, which serve exclusively for human vital needs which are consumed right away and thus do not leave anything long-lasting after them. Labor is the prolongation of life, metabolism, and absorption for the sake of existence and vice versa. Labor does not make the human, but on contrary turn him back to the animal.

Contrary to the process of making, intrinsic to work, where the process disappears in the end-product,

Labor, to be sure, also produces for the end of consumption, but since this end, the thing to be consumed lacks the worldly permanence of a piece of work, the end of the process is not determined by the end product but rather by the exhaustion of labor power, while the products themselves, on the other hand, immediately become means again, means of subsistence and reproduction of labor power. (Arendt 143)

Another important remark is that contemporary economy, oriented on labor and labor force, turn people into “members of a consumers’ society” (Arendt 134) This society requires constant and accelerated consumption, and moves toward turning the economy into “a waste economy, in which things must be almost as quickly devoured and discarded as they have appeared in the world if the process itself is not to come to a sudden catastrophic end.”(Arendt 134)

In that sense, the futility of Marx’ hopes that free time will release people from the need and the unused labor force will be used in “higher activities” can be understood; “the spare time of the animal laborans is never spent in anything but consumption, and the more time left to him, the greedier and more craving his appetites.” (Arendt 133)

Making subjects of art, as considered by Hannah Arendt, is concerned with the work sphere, i.e. the second type of activity in her classification. Work is an activity that corresponds to the artificial environment of human dwelling, and the creation of the artificial world of things.

Arendt considers works of art as the steadiest, and accordingly the most belonging to this world among all others: “The reification which occurs in writing something down, painting an image, modeling a figure, or composing a melody is, of course, related to the thought which preceded it, but what makes the thought a reality and fabricates things of thought is the same workmanship which, through the primordial instrument of human hands, builds the other durable things of the human artifice.”(Arendt 189)

The expediency, and the functionality of a subject of art, are characteristic of kitsch, and at the same time, constancy and stability are the highest value of art.

The third kind of activity – action, is for Arendt, first of all, in the speech and it is realizable in the public realm. The drama, which shows up “characters” for public judgment, is a reflection of this kind of activity in art.

Action, according to Arendt, is comparable to power, and the manipulation with other people: “Power is what keeps the public realm, the potential space of appearance between acting and speaking men, in existence.… a power potential and not an unchangeable, measurable, and reliable entity like force or strength.… power springs up between men when they act together and vanishes the moment they disperse.” (Arendt 200)

A brief history of labor in such scenery looks as follows: new European discoveries promoted overturning theory to practice, i.e. the change of vita contemplativa to vita activa; further, there is a revolution already inside vita activa when the active person turns into homo faber. The confusion comes to the end in the conditions of the modern age with the falling of homo faber and the accession of animal laborans.

Such process is interpreted by Arendt as the degradation of humans as she cites Cato in the last lines of her work, “Never is he more active than when he does nothing, never is he less alone than when he is by himself.” (Arendt 325)

According to Arendt, when relating politics to her classification of human activity, politics can be considered as an action, the highest form of human interaction and human existence. In that sense, Arendt distinguishes the social activities, i.e. labor and work, from the political.

The first is regulated by objective economical laws, while the latter is unpredictable and free. In that matter, the ability to enter the political realm can distinguish the historical epochs in labor, as “The chief difference between slave labor and modern, free labor is not that the laborer possesses personal freedom—freedom of movement, economic activity, and personal inviolability—but that he is admitted to the political realm and fully emancipated as a citizen.” (Arendt 217)

Developing her concept, Arendt tends to restore the forgotten meaning of political activity as a realm where the dignity and personality uniqueness of humans are revealed. Distinctness is one of the main premises of Arendt’s political theory. Her position is that any organic or inorganic subject has the specific attribute, only “man can express this distinction and distinguish himself, and only he can communicate himself and not merely something—thirst or hunger, affection or hostility or fear.” (Arendt 176) This distinctness is revealed through speech and action. In the political realm, the personality factor is revealed in that humans tend to insert their uniqueness in their works. This is what introduces uncertainty into the political realm making it unpredictable and accordingly uncontrolled.

Works Cited

Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958.

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“The Human Condition” by Hannah Arendt

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