Prologue and Chapter I: Vita Activa and the Human Condition

[Jassmine]

Emil wrote: "Tamara wrote: "
I sustain my family by cooking a meal, that's considered labor (unpaid labor). But if I start a catering business, it should still be considered labor since I am sustaining others a..."

So cooking a meal to feed my family may be considered "labor". Opening a catering business should be "work". What if I cook a meal and create a new dish after my own image and likeness, a dish that will be replicated through generations. Is it "action"?
I believe it will be more thoroughly explained in the III. and IV. chapter, I never read those before so it's mostly a guess, but I would say that both cooking for family and opening a catering business would be called labor. Why? Because it's necessary for your survival - feeding yourself and your family either directly by cooking or by making money by the business which buys your family food. Now, if you create a new recipe which becomes popular and will survive you... I think it could be considered work then - because it creates something that will become part of the world/culture... But if it were so great that you would become a legend = immortal, then... it could be considered action?

[Thomas]

Borum wrote: " Unless we live completely alone in a vacuum and never communicate with anyone else, it would be only possible for a very transient moment to have theoria that never comes down to earth among the others."

I'm not sure why she makes the distinction here, but I agree that the line is fuzzy. Sometimes it sounds like she's making "a distinction without a difference" (something Everyman used to accuse me of on occasion, probably with reason.) She might be building to a bigger distinction, the one between the public and the private, which corresponds to or contains the distinction between reason and contemplation. The public/private distinction seems to belong to the condition of societies, while reason/contemplation pertains to the condition of individuals. (Plato uses the same strategy in the Republic where he uses the tripartite structure of the soul as a model for the City itself. It didn't work for Socrates... will it work for Arendt?)

[Jassmine]

Borum wrote: "However, I'm not so sure about her comment on Socrates. Although he didn't write down his thoughts, he DID leave traces ..."

I feel like the point here is that he didn't strife for immortality. In Plato's dialogues Socrates is notorious for not participating in a political life which is a source of potential immortality and the place of action. He chose a theoretical live and yet he wrote nothing and therefore gave up immortality again. The great paradox here is that... since we are talking about him today, he definitely became immortal. (In that you are absolutely right...)
However, what I find problematic here is that how can we really discuss what Socrates' philosophy was or wasn't when we mostly know him from Plato and Xenofon of which neither belonged in his closest circle and who most of the time disagree with each other? There was a political struggle for Socrates's legacy after his death and... just talking about historical Socrates can be highly problematic.

Also... circling back to Plato, in Phaedrus Plato writes that better than writing in books that are dead things unable to defend themselves it is better to write into the souls of ones students/listeners... So when Arendt writes that no matter how concerned a thinker may be with eternity, the moment he sits down to write his thoughts he ceases to be concerned primarily with eternity and shifts his attention to leaving some trace of them. He has entered the vita activa and chosen its way of permanence and potential immortality. Does this applies to the writing in souls too? It would be definitely classified as action, something happening between people in words and as we saw in Socrates, immortality can be based on it too. Does it mean that the philosopher/theoretic who truly attained the eternal has to be forgotten? It doesn't seem so... (I'm not sure where I was going with this...)

[Jassmine]

Susanna wrote: "Thomas wrote: "We don't live in one world. We have public and private lives. Can they be so neatly separated?"

Not according to the feminist slogan, "the personal is political"."

That's a great point!

[Thomas]

Susanna wrote: "Thomas wrote: "We don't live in one world. We have public and private lives. Can they be so neatly separated?"

Not according to the feminist slogan, "the personal is political"."

This seems to me the issue in a nutshell, though I think Arendt believes this is a modern phenomenon, and one that I think we'll find that she finds troubling. A citizen of the Greek polis identified more as a public citizen than an individual human being.

(Apropos of nothing, Arendt was once asked if she was ashamed to be a German after WWII. She said she was ashamed to be a human.)

[Thomas]

Jassmine wrote: "So, to me her trying to make it more simple makes it much more complicated - because in this imagery the eternity and immortality are really blending together. Which she tries to argue against (right?) and I didn't really have issue separating them before, I feel like those two are distinctly different things."

I read this whole section as a prologue, so I'm still sort of waiting to see what her argument actually is. Whatever that turns out to be, I don't think it can be an either/or decision -- the human condition is both private/contemplative and public/political. The Republic fails precisely because privately held ideals cannot be translated to practical public life. How to manage the conflict or tension seems to be an open question at this point, but she is leading up to the question with a historical analysis of how mankind has managed it, or failed to manage it, in the past.

[Jassmine]

Thomas wrote: "The Republic fails precisely because privately held ideals cannot be translated to practical public life."

That's a good point.
And yes, I definitely agree, I think we are trying way too hard to understand some of the concepts that would be in much more depth explained later (at least from what I remember).

[Xan]

Right now it looks like Arendt keeps the public and private (household and politics) spheres, and later the social sphere, neatly separate from one another. I see them more as a Venn diagram, with each sphere overlapping to some degree with the others.

[Borum]

Jassmine wrote: "Borum wrote: I think even monks and hermits have their time of human interaction as did Jesus and Zarathustra and Buddha, etc. "

(Happily continuing of topic...)
Wouldn't you say that Jesus was an..."

I've just finished Thus Spoke Zarathustra and I'm wondering at how he keeps getting disappointed with the mass and then still keeps going down the mountain.. Actually I'm an introvert but often have to speak in presentations in front of a crowd.. doesn't necessarily mean I enjoy it.. ;-) (But you're onto something I think the prophets actually enjoy it)

[Borum]

Jassmine wrote: "Borum wrote: "However, I'm not so sure about her comment on Socrates. Although he didn't write down his thoughts, he DID leave traces ..."

I feel like the point here is that he didn't strife for i..."

I also think that although Socrates probably didn't mean to leave a trace for posterity, he kept asking his friends and even random people in public for discussion and although it is not political per se, the act of discussion among people on any subject concerned with the community such as justice or love or truth as he did may be what is the vita activa. Neither Socrates nor Confucius nor Jesus' words were written by themselves but by followers or witnesses who wrote about them and if they just kept out of getting involved in any public association or discussion at all, With discussions with so strong an influence on other people (whether they be followers, friends or enemies) people are bound to talk even after one's death (especially with someone who didn't think death was all so terrible).

Does this applies to the writing in souls too? It would be definitely classified as action, something happening between people in words and as we saw in Socrates, immortality can be based on it too
Even Homer, who didn't write anything down left his words in other people's souls so yes, I don't think it's limited to just writing,

[Borum]

Thomas wrote: "Susanna wrote: "Thomas wrote: "We don't live in one world. We have public and private lives. Can they be so neatly separated?"

Not according to the feminist slogan, "the personal is political"."

..."
Hmm.. I wonder if the modern age is reverting to the political atmosphere of the Greek polis. I also wonder what a converted slogan 'the political is personal' would mean in our times.

[Borum]

Xan wrote: "Right now it looks like Arendt keeps the public and private (household and politics) spheres, and later the social sphere, neatly separate from one another. I see them more as a Venn diagram, with ..."

Yeah I can't see it without the overlap either. I'm waiting to see how her distinction is further explained.

[Roger]

I took "work" to be one's calling, one's life's work, what one does because one wants to or feels it one's duty to do, especially creative activities. "Labor" is what one does to make a living. And I suppose if one is lucky the two are the same.