References for Theme: The Human Condition [1958]
- Arendt, Hannah
- The Human Condition (1958)
(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 faber which were highly characteristic of the modern age and...
- The Human Condition (2013)
(p.100) This destructive, devouring aspect of the laboring activity, to be sure, is visible only from the standpoint of the world and in distinction from work, which does not prepare matter for incorporation but changes it into material in order to work upon it and use the finished product. From the viewpoint of nature, it is work rather than labor that is destructive, since the work process takes matter out of nature's hands without giving it back to her in the swift course of the natural metabolism of the living body.
- The Human Condition (2013)
(p.107) The blessing of life as a whole, inherent in labor, can never be found in work and should not be mistaken for the inevitably brief spell of relief and joy which follows accomplishment and attends achievement.
- The Human Condition (2013)
(p.12) Aristotle distinguished three ways of life (b'xo'i) which men might choose in freedom, that is, in full independence of the necessities of life and the relationships they originated. This prerequisite of freedom ruled out all ways of life chiefly devoted to keeping one's self alive—not only labor, which was the way of life of the slave, who was coerced by the necessity to stay alive and by the rule of his master, but also the working life of the free craftsman and the acquisitive life of the merchant. In short, it excluded every- body who involuntarily or voluntarily, for his ...
- The Human Condition (2013)
(p.121) It is true that the enormous improvement in our labor tools—the mute robots with which homo faber has come to the help of the animal laborans, as distinguished from the human, speaking instruments (the instrumentum vocale, as the slaves in ancient house- holds were called) whom the man of action had to rule and oppress when he wanted to liberate the animal laborans from its bondage— has made the twofold labor of life, the effort of its sustenance and the pain of giving birth, easier and less painful than it has ever been. This, of course, has not eliminated compulsion ...
- The Human Condition (2013)
(p.123) While tools and instruments, designed to produce more and something altogether different from their mere use, are of secondary importance for laboring, the same is not true for the other great principle in the human labor process, the division of labor. Division of labor indeed grows directly out of the laboring process and should not be mistaken for the apparently similar principle of specialization which prevails in working processes and with which it is usually equated. Specialization of work and division of labor have in common only the general principle of organization, which itself has nothing to do with either ...
- The Human Condition (2013)
(p.124) The industrial revolution has replaced all workmanship with labor, and the result has been that the things of the modern world have become labor products whose natural fate is to be consumed, instead of work products which are there to be used.
- The Human Condition (2013)
(p.126) We live in a laborers' society because only laboring, with its inherent fertility, is likely to bring about abundance; and we have changed work into laboring, broken it up into its minute particles until it has lent itself to division where the common denominator of the simplest performance is reached in order to eliminate from the path of human labor power —which is part of nature and perhaps even the most powerful of all natural forces—the obstacle of the "unnatural" and purely worldly stability of the human artifice.
- The Human Condition (2013)
(p.133) The hope that inspired Marx and the best men of the various workers' movements—that free time eventually will emancipate men from necessity and make the animal laborans productive— rests on the illusion of a mechanistic philosophy which assumes that labor power, like any other energy, can never be lost, so that if it is not spent and exhausted in the drudgery of life it will automatically nourish other, "higher," activities. The guiding model of this hope in Marx was doubtless the Athens of Pericles which, in the future, with the help of the vastly increased productivity of human labor, would...
- The Human Condition (2013)
(p.136) The work of our hands, as distinguished from the labor of our bodies—homofaber who makes and literally "works upon" as distinguished from the animal laborans which labors and "mixes with" —fabricates the sheer unending variety of things whose sum total constitutes the human artifice. They are mostly, but not exclusively, objects for use and they possess the durability Locke needed for the establishment of property, the "value" Adam Smith needed for the exchange market, and they bear testimony to productivity, which Marx believed to be the test of human nature. Their proper use does not cause them to disappear and...
- The Human Condition (2013)
(p.139) Fabrication, the work of homo faber, consists in reification. Solidity, inherent in all, even the most fragile, things, comes from the material worked upon, but this material itself is not simply given and there, like the fruits of field and trees which we may gather or leave alone without changing the household of nature. Material is already a product of human hands which have removed it from its natural location, either killing a life process, as in the case of the tree which must be destroyed in order to provide wood, or interrupting one of nature's slower processes, as in ...
- The Human Condition (2013)
(p.14) With the disappearance of the ancient city-state—Augustine seems to have been the last to know at least what it once meant to be a citizen—the term vita activa lost its specifically political meaning and denoted all kinds of active engagement in the things of this world. To be sure, it does not follow that work and labor had risen in the hierarchy of human activities and were now equal in dignity with a life devoted to politics. It was, rather, the other way round: action was now also reckoned among the necessities of earthly life, so that contemplation (the bios ...
- The Human Condition (2013)
(p.141) This subjectivization of modern science, which is only a reflection of an even more radical subjectivization of the modern world, has its justification in this case in the fact that, in- deed, most work in the modern world is performed in the mode of labor, so that the worker, even if he wanted to, could not "labor for his work rather than for himself," and frequently is instrumental in the production of objects of whose ultimate shape he has not the slightest notion.
- The Human Condition (2013)
(p.143) The impulse toward repetition comes from the craftsman's need to earn his means of subsistence, in which case his working coincides with his laboring; or it comes from a demand for multiplication in the market, in which case the craftsman who wishes to meet this demand has added, as Plato would have said, the art of earning money to his craft. The point here is that in either case the process is repeated for reasons outside itself and is unlike the compulsory repetition inherent in laboring, where one must eat in order to labor and must labor in order to...
- The Human Condition (2013)
(p.146) What dominates the labor process and all work processes which are performed in the mode of laboring is neither man's purposeful effort nor the product he may desire, but the motion of the process itself and the rhythm it imposes upon the laborers.
- The Human Condition (2013)
(p.160) Unlike the animal laborans, whose social life is worldless and herdlike and who therefore is incapable of building or inhabiting a public, worldly realm, homo faber is fully capable of having a public realm of his own, even though it may not be a political realm, properly speaking.
- The Human Condition (2013)
(p.17) My contention is simply that the enormous weight of contemplation in the traditional hierarchy has blurred the distinctions and articulations within the vita activa itself and that, appearances notwithstanding, this condition has not been changed essentially by the modern break with the tradition and the eventual reversal of its hierarchical order in Marx and Nietzsche. It lies in the very nature of the famous "turning upside down" of philosophic systems or currently accepted values, that is, in the nature of the operation itself, that the conceptual framework is left more or less intact.
- The Human Condition (2013)
(p.22) The vita activa, human life in so far as it is actively engaged in doing something, is always rooted in a world of men and of man- made things which it never leaves or altogether transcends. Things and men form the environment for each of man's activities, which would be pointless without such location; yet this environment, the world into which we are born, would not exist without the human activity which produced it, as in the case of fabricated things; which takes care of it, as in the case of cultivated land; or which established it through organization, as ...
- The Human Condition (2013)
(p.31) What all Greek philosophers, no matter how opposed to polls life, took for granted is that freedom is exclusively located in the political realm, that necessity is primarily a pre-political phenome- non, characteristic of the private household organization, and that force and violence are justified in this sphere because they are the only means to master necessity—for instance, by ruling over slaves—and to become free. Because all human beings are subject to necessity, they are entitled to violence toward others; violence is the pre-political act of liberating oneself from the necessity of life for the freedom of world. This freedom...
- The Human Condition (2013)
(p.36) he "good life," as Aristotle called the life of the citizen, therefore was not merely better, more care- free or nobler than ordinary life, but of an altogether different quality. It was "good" to the extent that by having mastered the necessities of sheer life, by being freed from labor and work, and by overcoming the innate urge of all living creatures for their own survival, it was no longer bound to the biological life process.
- The Human Condition (2013)
(p.4) The modern age has carried with it a theoretical glorification of labor and has resulted in a factual transformation of the whole of society into a laboring society. The fulfilment of the wish, therefore, like the fulfilment of wishes in fairy tales, comes at a moment when it can only be self-defeating. It is a society of laborers which is about to be liber- ated from the fetters of labor, and this society does no longer know of those other higher and more meaningful activities for the sake of which this freedom would deserve to be won. Within this society, which ...
- The Human Condition (2013)
(p.42) [Footnote 35]-Classical economics assumed that man, in so far as he is an active being, acts exclusively from self-interest and is driven by only one desire, the desire for acquisition. Adam Smith's introduction of an "invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of [anybody's] intention" proves that even this minimum of action with its uniform motivation still contains too much unpredictable initiative for the establishment of a science. Marx developed classical economics further by substituting group or class interests for individual and personal interests and by reducing these class interests to two major classes, capitalists and workers, ...
- The Human Condition (2013)
(p.46) Perhaps the clearest indication that society constitutes the public organization of the life process itself may be found in the fact that in a relatively short time the new social realm transformed all modern communities into societies of laborers and jobholders; in other words, they became at once centered around the one activity necessary to sustain life. (To have a society of laborers, it is of course not necessary that every member actually be a laborer or worker—not even the emancipation of the working class and the enormous potential power which majority rule accords to it are decisive here;—but only ...
- The Human Condition (2013)
(p.47) The moment laboring was liberated from the restrictions imposed by its banishment into the private realm—and this emancipation of labor was not a consequence of the emancipation of the working class, but preceded it—it was as though the growth element inherent in all organic life had completely overcome and overgrown the processes of decay by which organic life is checked and balanced in nature's household. The social realm, where the life process has established its own public domain, has let loose an unnatural growth, so to speak, of the natural; and it is against this growth, not merely against society ...
- The Human Condition (2013)
(p.7) With the term vita activa, I propose to designate three fundamental human activities: labor, work, and action. They are fundamental because each corresponds to one of the basic conditions under which life on earth has been given to man. Labor is the activity which corresponds to the biological process of the human body, whose spontaneous growth, metabolism, and eventual decay are bound to the vital necessities produced and fed into the life process by labor. The human condition of labor is life itself. Work is the activity which corresponds to the unnaturalness of human existence, which is not imbedded in,...
- The Human Condition (2013)
(p.73) The fact that the modern age emancipated the working classes and the women at nearly the same historical moment must certainly be counted among the characteristics of an age which no longer believes that bodily functions and material concerns should be hidden.
- The Human Condition (2013)
(p.74) The one activity taught by Jesus in word and deed is the activity of goodness, and goodness obviously harbors a tendency to hide from being seen or heard. Christian hostility toward the public realm, the tendency at least of early Christians to lead a life as far removed from the public realm as possible, can also be under- stood as a self-evident consequence of devotion to good works, independent of all beliefs and expectations. For it is manifest that the moment a good work becomes known and public, it loses its specific character of goodness, of being done for nothing...
- The Human Condition (2013)
(p.79) The distinction between labor and work which I propose is unusual. The phenomenal evidence in its favor is too striking to be ignored, and yet historically it is a fact that apart from a few scattered remarks, which moreover were never developed even in the theories of their authors, there is hardly anything in either the pre- modern tradition of political thought or in the large body of modern labor theories to support it. Against this scarcity of historical evidence, however, stands one very articulate and obstinate testimony, namely, the simple fact that every European language, ancient and modern, contains two ...
- The Human Condition (2013)
(p.8) Labor assures not only individual survival, but the life of the species. Work and its product, the human artifact, bestow a measure of permanence and durability upon the futility of mortal life and the fleeting character of human time.
- The Human Condition (2013)
(p.81) The reason why this distinction [between labor and work] should have been overlooked in ancient times and its significance remained unexplored seems obvious enough. Contempt for laboring, originally arising out of a passionate striving for freedom from necessity and a no less passionate impatience with every effort that left no trace, no monument, no great work worthy of remembrance, spread with the increasing demands of polls life upon the time of the citizens and its insistence on their abstention (skhole) from all but political activities, until it covered everything that demanded an effort. Earlier political custom, prior to the full...
- The Human Condition (2013)
(p.85) It is surprising at first glance, however, that the modern age— with its reversal of all traditions, the traditional rank of action and contemplation no less than the traditional hierarchy within the vita activa itself, with its glorification of labor as the source of all values and its elevation of the animal laborans to the position traditionally held by the animal rationale—should not have brought forth a single theory in which animal laborans and homo faber, "the labour of our body and the work of our hands," are clearly distinguished. Instead, we find first the distinction between productive and unproductive...
- The Human Condition (2013)
(p.87) In other words, the distinction between productive and unproductive labor contains, albeit in a prejudicial manner, the more fundamental distinction between work and labor.16 It is indeed the mark of all laboring that it leaves nothing behind, that the result of its effort is almost as quickly consumed as the effort is spent. And yet this effort, despite its futility, is born of a great urgency and motivated by a more powerful drive than anything else, because life itself depends upon it. The modern age in general and Karl Marx in particular, overwhelmed, as it were, by the unprecedented actual ...
- The Human Condition (2013)
(p.89) It is interesting to note that the distinctions between skilled and unskilled and between intellectual and manual work play no role in either classical political economy or in Marx's work. Compared with the productivity of labor, they are indeed of secondary importance. Every activity requires a certain amount of skill, the activity of cleaning and cooking no less than the writing of a book or the building of a house. The distinction does not apply to different activities but notes only certain stages and qualities within each of them. It could acquire a certain importance through the modem division of labor, ...
- The Human Condition (2013)
(p.90) Quite different is the case of the more popular category of manual and intellectual work. Here, the underlying tie between the la- borer of the hand and the laborer of the head is again the laboring process, in one case performed by the head, in the other by some other part of the body. Thinking, however, which is presumably the activity of the head, though it is in some way like laboring— also a process which probably comes to an end only with life it- self—is even less "productive" than labor; if labor leaves no permanent trace, thinking leaves nothing ...
- The Human Condition (2013)
(p.93) The contempt for labor in ancient theory and its glorification in modern theory both take their bearing from the subjective attitude or activity of the laborer, mistrusting his painful effort or praising his productivity. The subjectivity of the approach may be more obvious in the distinction between easy and hard work, but we saw that at least in the case of Marx—who, as the greatest of modern labor theorists, necessarily provides a kind of touchstone in these discussions—labor's productivity is measured and gauged against the requirements of the life process for its own reproduction; it resides in the potential surplus...
- The Human Condition (2013)
(p.98) […] unlike working, whose end has come when the object is finished, ready to be added to the common world of things, 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.
- The Human Condition (2013)
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