HANNAH ARENDT

BIOGRAPHICAL DATA: 1906: Born October 26, in Hannover. 1909: Emigration to Königsberg. 1913: Death of her father. 1924-1928: Studies philosophy, theology and Greek in

Marburg, Freiburg and Heidelberg. 1929: Marriage to Günther Stern (Anders). 1933: Imprisoned by the Gestapo and escape to Paris. 1940: Marriage to Heinrich Blücher and detention in

the concentration camp Gurs. 1941: Emigration to the United States. 1941-1944: Editor of the journal ‘Aufbau’. 1953-1956: Professor at Brooklyn College (New York). 1963-1967: Professor at University of Chicago. 1967-1975: Professor at the New School of Social

Research (New York). 1975: Died December 4, in New York.

Vita Contemplativa & Vita Activa

• Plato & Aristotle : political thought that placed thought (vita contemplativa) above any kind of action

(vita activa).Arendt argues: That tradition lasted until Marx turned it back on its head

placing action over thought . However, Marx also reversed the hierarchy within the

vita activa, So that pure action was no longer the highest activity but the lowest.

Marxist View - Ascendency Of Labor

• Labor, once the lowest of all human activities, suddenly became the highest and

• Most human action of all. Arendt believes with this• Man lost both his Socratic eternity and his Homeric

immortality.• Immortality is “endurance in time, deathless life on

earth and in this world as it was given”.• Eternity is transcendent of the Earth. It is beyond

and cannot be measured by earthly terms.

A POLITICAL ANIMALArendt argues that the separation of the private

sphere and the public sphere is a precondition for a modern democracy.

Social life > is dominated by biological needs.Political life > is of a higher order than the social

life.Liberty > manifests itself in political life rather

than in social life. Political virtue > to participate as an active

citizen in the public sphere.

A CLASSICAL DICHOTOMY

PUBLIC SPHERE PRIVATE SPHERE

Polis (political activity) Oikos (domestic life)

Governmental authority (state)

Self-regulation (market, family)

Transparent (open) Not transparent (closed)

THREE FORMS OF HUMAN ACTIVITY

In order to clarify the specific character of the public sphere, Arendt reflects on human activity.

Vita activa comprehends three forms of activity:1. Labour > biological reproduction.2. Work > the production of tools and things.3. Action (praxis) > showing one’s uniqueness via deliberation.

ANIMAL LABORANS Labor is the activity that concerns the human condition of

life. Central question: does labor fulfil the biological needs of

mankind? In order to secure the maintenance of life labor is a never-

ending story. Labor is a kind of bondage, because it is induced by

necessity. It refers to consumption and depolitization. Labor belongs to the private sphere, i.e. the oikos.

WORK:HOMO FABER Work is the activity that concerns the human condition of

worldliness. Central question: does work create a world that is useful

for mankind?

It is “the activity which corresponds to the unnaturalness of human existence

Which is not embedded in And whose mortality is not compensated by The species’ ever-recurring life-cycle.” Work is the creation of artefacts, i.e. things that are not

given in nature. It refers to the establishment of a secunda natura.

WORK

• Activity which corresponds to the unnaturalness of human existence

• Work corresponds to the fabrication of an artificial world of things

• constructions which endure temporally beyond the act of creation itself.

WORK• Work thus creates a world distinct from anything given in

nature (what do you think?)• A world distinguished by its durability, its semi-

permanence and relative independence from the individual actors and acts which call it into being.

• Arendt names humanity in this kind of activity -homo faber • The builder of walls (both physical and cultural) which

divide the human realm from that of nature and provide a stable context (a “common world”) of spaces and institutions within which human life can unfold.

WORK - Characteristics• Work violates the realm of nature • Shaping and transforming it according to the plans and

needs of humans• This makes work a distinctly human (i.e. non-animal)

activity as contrasted with labor• Work is governed by human ends and intentions • It is under humans’ sovereignty and control• Work exhibits a certain quality of freedom, unlike labor

which is subject to nature and necessity• Work is inherently public whereas labor is private• Work (unlike labor) creates an objective and common

world which both stands between humans and unites them

WORK• Work in and of itself, is not the mode of human

activity which corresponds to politics• However, its fabrications are nonetheless the

preconditions for the existence of a political community

• The common world of institutions and spaces that work creates furnish the arena in which citizens may come together to engage in political activity.

WORK AND NATURE AND TECHNOLOGY

• Can the environment be saved without working less?

• Without considerable problems and compromises?

• What is the difference between Tools and Machines ( Technology ) in Arendt’s way of thinking?

• Are Tools Animal Laborans and Machines Work?

Action - 24

• Human Plurality– Condition of both action and speech

• Equality• Distinction

• Man can live without laboring (slaves)• A life without speech and without action is dead to

the world (not human – no longer lived among men).

• Action can initiate the unexpected and discloses who you are.

Action 26

• Action is never possible in isolation• Action– Beginning (made by a single person)– Achievement

• Actions cause other actions (unpredictablilty)

Action 28

• Power is actualized only where word and deed have not parted company– Words not empty; deeds not brutal

• Power springs up between men when they act together (and vanishes when they disperse)– Non violent popular revolt is powerful– You cannot rule over dead men

• Tyranny – isolate subjects from each other by fear and suspicion (shutdown the internet)

Action 29

• A decrease in common sense and increase in superstition and gullibility are infallible signs of alienation from the world.

• People who meet in the exchange market are “not persons” by providers of product. Exchange (not action and speech) hold this market together.

• People remain superior to what they have done for the source of creativity springs from who they are (not what they achieve)

Action 30

• Read note 53 on page 218• Workers today are no longer outside society.

They are jobholders like everybody else.

Action 31

• Frustration of action– Unpredictability– Irreversibility of the process– Anonymity of authors

• Solution – one man rule– May have short-range advantages– Inevitable loss of power (may occur later)

Action 31

• Utopias break down under the weight of reality (could not control real human relationships)

Action 32-33

• Read page 230• Deeds endure (action has no end)• Remedies to the frustrations of action– Forgiveness– Promises– Moral code (page 238)

• 34 – Promises

ZOON POLITICON Action is the activity that refers to the human condition of

plurality. Central question: does an action recognizes the plurality

of perspectives and the struggle for freedom? Plurality is a question of identity and difference, “because

we are all the same, that is, human, in such a way that nobody is ever the same as anyone else who ever lived, lives, or will live.”

It presumes the recognition that people judge an act from different perspectives.

Via an action mankind realizes its freedom.

ACTION• To act, in its most general sense, means to take

initiative, to begin (as the Greek word archein, ‘to begin,’ ‘to lead,’ and eventually ‘to rule’ indicates), to set something in motion.

• Because they are newcomers and beginners by virtue of birth, men take initiative, are prompted into action.

• Freedom is to be seen as a character of human existence in the world.

ACTION AND SPEECH• Freedom is actually the reason that men live together in

political organizations . • Without it, political life as such would be meaningless. • The raison d’être of politics is freedom, and its field of

experience is action.• Speech is the communicative and disclosive quality of

action meaning distinctive identity is revealed by action through speech.

• For Arendt, it follows then that through free speech and persuasion citizens conduct their lives together – politics

• Politics and the exercise of freedom as action are synonymous.

ACTION

In action, we commemorate the great deeds of life and death.

Man does not so much possess freedom as he, or better his coming into the world, is equated with the appearance of freedom in the universe; man is free because he is a beginning…