(p.306)

‘What needs explanation is not the modern esteem of homo Faber but the fact that this esteem was so quickly followed by the elevation of laboring to the highest position in the hierarchical order of the vita activa. This second reversal of hierarchy within the vita activa came about more gradually and less dramatically than either the reversal of contemplation and action in general or the reversal of action and fabrication in particular. The elevation of laboring was preceded by certain deviations and variations from the traditional mentality of homo...

(p.209) Poiesis aims at an end different from itself, but this is impossible in the case of praxis, because the end is merely doing well.

“Only the kind of movement in which the end is immanent is action properly speaking” (praxis).

The kind of work done by the vast majority of the inhabitants of the modern world cannot be understood in terms of the nature of a practice with goods internal to itself, and for very good reason. One of the key moments in the creation of modernity occurs when production moves outside the household. So long as production work occurs within the structure of households, it is easy and right to understand that work as part of the sustaining of the community of the household and of those wider forms...