Classics and the Western Canon discussion
Arendt, The Human Condition
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Prologue and Chapter I: Vita Activa and the Human Condition
I suppose it is a valid perspective one could choose to take, but I am struggling to allow the assertion in the introduction that human achievement is motivated by an attempt to escape rather than prove and expand human ability.It is the same desire to escape from imprisonment to the earth that is manifest in the attempt to create life in the test tube, in the desire to mix “frozen germ plasm from people of demonstrated ability under the microscope to produce superior human beings” and “to alter [their] size, shape and function”; and the wish to escape the human condition, I suspect, also underlies the hope to extend man’s life-span far beyond the hundred-year limit.Later, in the first chapter she seems to nullify this assertion by confirming the human condition is inescapable,
Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition (p. 2). University of Chicago Press. Kindle Edition.
Men are conditioned beings because everything they come in contact with turns immediately into a condition of their existence.with the explanation that,
Whatever enters the human world of its own accord or is drawn into it by human effort becomes part of the human condition.
Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition (p. 9). University of Chicago Press. Kindle Edition.
David wrote: "I suppose it is a valid perspective one could choose to take, but I am struggling to allow the assertion in the introduction that human achievement is motivated by an attempt to escape rather than prove and expand human ability.It is the same desire to escape from imprisonment to the earth that is manifest in the attempt to create life in the test tube,..."
I don't think it's human ability but the earth that mankind is trying to escape. In her example, literally escaping in a spaceship. "The earth is the very quintessence of the human condition..." and mankind is turning away from that condition, our natural home, the earth, by creating an artificial man-made world as an alternative. We are creating artificially the world that conditions us. Test tube babies and unnaturally long life spans, for example. GMO foods fabricated in labs and processed in factories rather than planted and harvested by farmers. In the process, she argues, we are becoming creatures of our own technology.
Where I have to question her is whether we are really doing this thoughtlessly or not. Humans live for the most part in an artificial world now, one that we have created with technology. But are we using it thoughtfully, or have we become "slaves" to technology?
Thomas wrote: "David wrote: "I suppose it is a valid perspective one could choose to take, but I am struggling to allow the assertion in the introduction that human achievement is motivated by an attempt to escap..."I understand she saw it as an apogee of humanity's attempts to escape human nature, but hardly I can understand what she means by that. She certainly saw danger in that, and also it is a product of human ability to create.
Her description of scientists is also interesting, they are the driving force behind these attempts, on the other hand, they cannot control how a society use the science they make.
Thomas wrote: "Why does work, for example, need to be distinct from labor?I understood labor to mean those ongoing, continuous activities we undertake to sustain life:
The human condition of labor is life itself.
There is no beginning, middle, or end to labor. It is continuous. I’m probably way off base here, but I understand this to mean those activities that have traditionally been designated as “women’s work”—the cooking, the cleaning, the care-giving, etc. etc. Labor is cyclical because the task is never completed, once and for all. It has to be repeated over and over, again.
I understand work to mean an activity that has a definite beginning, middle, and end. For example, work is when you take something in nature, re-fashion it, and make something new out of it. You have a final product and can move on to something else. With labor, you have to keep repeating the same task, ad infinitum.
As I say, I’m probably way off base.
I thought labor was as you said, Tamara, but I thought work produced artifacts, things used or sold whose value lies elsewhere than in sustaining the biological being. Work goes beyond sustaining oneself.So is growing sufficient crops to sustain oneself labor, or am I taking this too literally? And if it is, then if you grow crops in excess of what sustains you, crops you can sell, does the labor become work? Or is it still labor because it is still sustaining someone?
I thought I understood vita activa, but after that discussion of vita contemplativa, I'm confused, so I'll wait on that one.
Thomas wrote: For Arendt, "Vita Activa" is composed of three fundamental human activities: Work, Labor, and Action. . .What are these things, and how does she differentiate them?"I could not help drawing lines here to Plato's The Republic Book II
Arendt's The human condition of labor is natural effort of living and obtaining the biological needs life itself to Socrates healthy, non-luxurious city, i.e., the essentials only, which Glaucon refers to as a city of pigs.[Republic, 372]
Arendt's The human condition of work is effort to create unatural, or artificial, worldliness to Socrates unhealthy city of luxury, which is unhealthy because it entails so much unnecessary overhead: land, military, etc.[Republic 373-375]
Arendt's human condition of action as the human condition of plurality to balancing the several better attempts at defining Justice as guidelines for social and political interaction because man, by necessity, is a social being.
I also disagreed with this: "The reason why it may be wise to distrust the political judgement of scientists . . . [is] the fact that they move in a world where speech has lost its power."She said that in the late 50s, more than 60 years ago, and I can't imagine speech having lost its power in this day and age. We are prisoners of our own highly stylized rhetoric, whose purpose is to persuade, not inform. We have ideologues everywhere, and I can't imagine having ideologues without speech.
Food for thought is her comment that automation has replaced labor but not the laborer, leaving the laborer with nothing to do. What shall the laborer do?
Also interesting: Interaction between men requires plurality (not majority) to get anything done, which implies dissent.
Regarding what her point is, she does say the central theme of the book is "What are we doing?" Is she asking what our plan is? I don't think we have one, and I don't that that's how we operate as a species -- wonder and curiosity influence what we do too much to have a plan. But since she's leaving out thinking, or so she says, I can't imagine what the answer is.
David, I thought Arendt was just extending the metaphor by using the word escape. I didn't take it too literally.
I am not very far into the first chapter. I took "labor", which she says are those things that are for our survival and survival of the species, as meaning those things like growing food/raising animals to nourish us and protect our bodies from the elements, cooking, procreation, child-rearing, making implements for daily activities that support essential biological processes etc.I was bogged down when I came to the term natality. Obviously she doesn't use it as I learned the term in public health statistics. What I deduced so far is that it is when we become engaged in the plurality-driven activities. Is that correct? Did she coin this term in this context (non-statistical)?
Xan wrote: "I thought labor was as you said, Tamara, but I thought work produced artifacts, things used or sold whose value lies elsewhere than in sustaining the biological being. Work goes beyond sustaining o..."Xan, I agree with your understanding of work. You said it a lot better than I did. But your question about growing crops to sustain oneself and selling the excess led me to ask this:
Can the identical task be categorized either as labor or as work depending on who benefits? If 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 and giving them a product they consume. It can't be work since food is not an artifact. So it is still labor. The difference is I'm getting paid for it.
I guess what I'm asking is this: if we go with her definition of labor, do we need to draw a distinction between paid labor and unpaid labor?
Tamara wrote: Can the identical task be categorized either as labor or as work depending on who benefits? If 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 and giving them a product they consume. It can't be work since food is not an artifact. So it is still labor. I would classify anything that provides the necessities for others to sustain their ability to live (within a natural lifespan) as labor under Arendt's definition as it assures the life of our species.
Xan wrote: "Food for thought is her comment that automation has replaced labor but not the laborer, leaving the laborer with nothing to do.."Is she right about that? Has automation replaced labor? Unless I have completely misunderstood her definition of labor (a distinct possibility), it sounds to me that automation has replaced work--not labor.
Chris wrote: "I would classify anything that provides the necessities for others to sustain their ability to live (within a natural lifespan) as labor under Arendt's definition as it assures the life of our species..."Thanks, Chris. I guess that encompasses both paid and unpaid labor.
Xan wrote: "David, I thought Arendt was just extending the metaphor by using the word escape. I didn't take it too literally."she seemed fairly sincere about it to me.
But, curiously enough, this joy was not triumphal; it was not pride or awe at the tremendousness of human power and mastery which filled the hearts of men, who now, when they looked up from the earth toward the skies, could behold there a thing of their own making. The immediate reaction, expressed on the spur of the moment, was relief about the first “step toward escape from men’s imprisonment to the earth.”If anything took away from the triumphal joy, it was the fear in others, especially American fears, that the Russian space program was ahead.
Also, knowing our Sun and Earth are here for a very long but limited time, when do human efforts to migrate into space go from being work, a luxury, to a labor, necessary to perpetuating human life?
David wrote: "If anything took away from the triumphal joy, it was the fear in others, especially American fears, that the Russian space program was ahead."I was too young at the time to appreciate or fear that. I remember the triumph, but the triumph was subdued in the U.S. because the U.S. was not first, nor was it first in putting a man in space. What I remember most was shock that the Soviet Union beat the U.S. Thus the man on the moon challenge. It was a political competition wrapped in science, and it may have kept us away from other, uglier forms of competition.
Tamara wrote: "Is she right about that? Has automation replaced labor? Unless I have completely misunderstood her definition of labor (a distinct possibility), it sounds to me that automation has replaced work--not labor."Automation and technology have always created more jobs than they obsoleted -- until recently -- but that doesn't mean new jobs are given to those who lost jobs. Automation and technology replace skills, and those with those skills get left behind.
But I agree with you. This sounds more like work than labor. This is why I dislike philosophers kidnapping well-known, often used words and assigning them different meanings.
Xan wrote: "I also disagreed with this: "The reason why it may be wise to distrust the political judgement of scientists . . . [is] the fact that they move in a world where speech has lost its power."She sai..."
I take it she means that scientists aren't able to explain themselves in non-scientific language. A climate scientist is not able to use rhetoric (political speech) to persuade us that a change of 3 degrees in the global climate is a serious threat. People who don't speak "climate science" hear 3 degrees and laugh because they don't have the education or background to understand what climate is and what 3 degrees means -- they don't speak the language. Arendt says in fact that we are wise not to trust scientists qua scientists for just this reason. Why trust someone if you don't understand what they are saying?
An important detail that distinguishes labor from work is artificial worldliness. Labor supports us in the natural world. Work corresponds to the "unnaturalness of human existence... Work provides an 'artificial' world of things, distinctly different from all natural surroundings." The world of a carpenter consists of tools and different types of wood and the specialized skills used in the workshop. This is a world created over time by people, not provided by nature. Even if the raw materials (trees) are natural, the work itself and the world in which that work is conducted is entirely man-made.I think there's a tendency to look for a judgment call -- i.e. nature is somehow intrinsically better than artificial worldliness. But I don't think she's making that judgment. On the other hand, thoughtlessness is probably always a bad thing.
Thomas wrote: "I think there's a tendency to look for a judgment call -- i.e. nature is somehow intrinsically better than artificial worldliness. But I don't think she's making that judgment..."I think you've made an important point. If she is making judgment, then only about fleeing the nature, the human nature.
Thomas wrote: "I take it she means that scientists aren't able to explain themselves in non-scientific language..."Thanks for your response, Thomas. I think that's probably true, and I wouldn't want scientists using rhetoric anyway (not that there aren't some who already do).
My emphasis was on the second part of the statement, the part about how they (and we?) move around in a world where speech has lost its power. My point is it hasn't, and it's more powerful than ever because of our rhetoric. At the center of politics is speech, and we are more political now than we were back then.
Susanna wrote: "I was thinking the same thing, Tamara. The pandemic has shown us that "labor" needs to be done in person, whilst "work" can mostly be done on a computer, remotely. But, is the computer doing the work, are is a person still necessary?."I would argue there is a correspondence: the person is still necessary (for now) but fewer people are needed than in the past as the work is increasingly taken on by computers.
I’m wondering if, in fact, we do live in a world, in which as she says, “speech has lost its power.” Arendt says, Men in the plural, that is, men in so far as they live and move and act in this world, can experience meaningfulness only because they can talk with and make sense to each other and to themselves. What if I surround myself with and only listen to people who experience the world as I experience it? With people who "make sense" to me because they share my world view?
We are bombarded from all sides where almost every aspect of our lives—whether we mask up or not, whether we get vaccinated or not, etc. is interpreted as a political statement. When a speech has become so politicized, when we hear only what we want to hear because it conforms to our world view, when we dismiss alternative ways of seeing and understanding as mere gobbledygook, haven’t we eroded the power of speech? Haven't we rendered rhetoric--the art of persuasion--to be something meaningless? And aren’t we already there? Or am I being too bleak?
I think rhetoric is causing too much pain to have become meaningless. I wonder if we aren't beaten senseless by it. We are certainly bombarded with speech, and maybe that diminishes its quality, but quantity matters.
Tamara wrote: I’m wondering if, in fact, we do live in a world, in which as she says, “speech has lost its power.” Arendt says, Men in the plural, that is, men in so far as they live and move and act in this world, can experience meaningfulness only because they can talk with and make sense to each other and to themselves.What if I surround myself with and only listen to people who experience the world as I experience it? With people who "make sense" to me because they share my world.
I also had that thought. At least in the U.S. as we have become more polarized, it seems as if more and more people get news and information from sources that only reflect their own worldview. Which impedes the ability to have civilized dialogue and acknowledge the things we value that are in common. Our shared experiences & the ability to allow for discussions from all perspectives enables us to see a fuller picture and perhaps come to agreement that leads to a stable society. if we are unable to talk to one another, where does that lead? Chaos.
I had to read the section on the term Vita Activa multiple times and still did not come away with a firm grasp of how Arendt is using the term as she implies it is not the traditional use of the term.Also, the eternity vs. Immortality section. Eternity leaves no trace? It is the imcomprehensible?
Help! Can you tell I am not an abstract thinker?
I had difficulty understanding those two sections as well, Chris. I echo your cry for help.
David wrote: "I suppose it is a valid perspective one could choose to take, but I am struggling to allow the assertion in the introduction that human achievement is motivated by an attempt to escape rather than prove and expand human ability."I always understood this in the context of Western philosophy and theology. She equates the Earth with material and body in a sense and so "escaping Earth" to me means overcoming the limits of your body. I think she states this intent quite clearly right in the beginning: The banality of the statement should not make us overlook how extraordinary in fact it was; for although Christians have spoken of the earth as a vale of tears and philosophers have looked upon their body as a prison of mind or soul, nobody in the history of mankind has ever conceived of the earth as a prison for men's bodies...
From what I read of Arendt, she enroots all her thoughts in tradition. She traces how people historically thought about things and where some concepts origin.
I originally wanted to write that because of that it doesn't have to really apply on present time, but now I think it actually does. Can't escaping human condition and expanding human abilities be actually the same thing? I think that the former is a vaster category, but...
(Sorry, if this is messy, I changed my mind multiple times while writing it 🤣)
Chris wrote: "I had to read the section on the term Vita Activa multiple times and still did not come away with a firm grasp of how Arendt is using the term as she implies it is not the traditional use of the te..."I'll try to simplify it, but I'll probably just complicate it (correct me if I'm wrong).
Vita activa is in (let's say) opposition to vita contemplativa. Vita comtemplativa originates in what Aristotle calls bios theoreticos which is the way of life of most philosophers, or at least what we understand as philosophy (or anything else that comprises of life in contemplation/study/ not physical "active" work). To really simplify it, vita activa is everything else - she divides it into labor, work and action... (here goes the beginning of the first chapter...)
Arendt's thing is that she wants to "rehabilitate" vita activa because it the course of history it lost it's prestige.
If I remember correctly the eternity vs. immortality thing (I didn't get to it yet, this time around)
Eternity is outside of time, outside of the world. Eternity is something that is practically unreachable experience of eternal is a kind of death, and the only thing that separates it from real death is that it is not final because no living creature can endure it for any length of time. You can "see" eternity in some kind of vision, but you can't "keep" it.
Immortality happens in time, it can't exist without it and you can attain it by some great action before others eyes. It's the basis of homeric mythos, where all the heroes try to gain kleos, they want to be sing about, because being remembered means being immortal. Achilles is immortal, because Ilias exists and is read.
Hope this helped a little.
Jassmine wrote: "Chris wrote: "I had to read the section on the term Vita Activa multiple times and still did not come away with a firm grasp of how Arendt is using the term as she implies it is not the traditional..."Thank you for this, Jassmine. And, yes, it helps a lot.
Jassmine wrote: "Immortality happens in time, it can't exist without it and you can attain it by some great action before others eyes. It's the basis of homeric mythos, where all the heroes try to gain kleos, they want to be sing about, because being remembered means being immortal. Achilles is immortal, because Ilias exists and is read."
These lines remind me of Shakespeare's Sonnet #18 where he claims his beloved has achieved immortality through the lines of his poem.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem...
Tamara wrote: "These lines remind me of Shakespeare's Sonnet #18 where he claims his beloved has achieved immortality through the lines of his poem."Yes, I was thinking in that direction too. Writers have the powers of making someone immortal - other example that comes to mind would be Dante's Beatrice. It's kind of two-fold though, because it the end (in our culture at least) it makes the writer himself even more immortal.
Chris wrote: "Tamara wrote: I’m wondering if, in fact, we do live in a world, in which as she says, “speech has lost its power.” Arendt says, Men in the plural, that is, men in so far as they live and move and ..."Yes, indeed, that's exactly how I understood it as well, that when we get into echo chambers, we lose our ability to create shared meaning. Unfortunately, it's not just the US where people are divided into tribes and have an intense hatred of everyone outside their own group.
After finishing the first chapter, I feel like I oversimplified the vita activa problem and I completely skipped the part about the tradition problem (spoiler, I'm not really sure about that part either, so tell me if you understand it differently).To understand the issue holistically we have to start at the distinction between zoé and bios, both of these words mean life, but while zoé is the life that animals have too (I guess we could say it's the life force?), bios is the life of choice as Arend sais it's the life in full independence of the necessities of life.
It kind of reminds me of Wolf's point in A Room of One's Own, for a woman to be a writer, she needs some money and a room. Plato can be a philosopher, because he is an aristocrat and he doesn't have to worry about money and other things that are "beneath him". For a man to be politician in Athens he needs to have slaves who would work for him, who would take his necessities on themselves so he can pursue political life. (I guess, I am getting a bit ahead of myself, I think there is more about this in second chapter...)
My point is, when Aristotle defines his three bios/ways of life, he is referring only to a group of privileged individuals. The one that don't really interest us is bios apolaustikos, the important ones are bios politikos and bios theoretikos. Bios theoretikos is traditionaly valued the highest - it's the way of life of philosophers and philosophers came up with this distinction, so it makes sense... But in reality, in antient Athens bios politikos was valued highest (if I remember correctly, the second chapter goes in depth on this, so I'm moving on).
Now, traditionally vita activa is translation of bios politikos in Latin and vita contemplativa is the translation of bios theoretikos. The problem is this:
Neither labor nor work was considered to possess sufficient dignity to constitute bios at all, an autonomous and authentically human way of life; since they served and produced what was necessary and useful, they could not be free.
So what happened is:
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.
Political way of life lost it's privilege and just merged with other kind of "works" = with both work and labor (which aren't part of bios politikos). This means that it lost it's high status of bios and got under necessity.
Now, when she sais: If therefore, the use of the term vita activa, as I propose it here, is in manifest to the tradition, it is because I doubt not the validity of the experience underlying the distinction but rather the hierarchical order inherent in it from its inception.
I originally thought she meant that she uses the term vita activa in the broader sense (vs. the bios politikos). But now I think she only means to say that she protests the traditional hierarchy of vita contemplativa and vita activa. That one isn't better or more important than the other.
If some of Arendt's categories seem a little confusing, don't worry. She is going to devote whole chapters, practically the whole book, to the primary aspects of the human condition -- labor, work, and action. I'm hoping things will get clearer as we move along.
Jassmine wrote: "I originally thought she meant that she uses the term vita activa in the broader sense (vs. the bios politikos). But now I think she only means to say that she protests the traditional hierarchy of vita contemplativa and vita activa. That one isn't better or more important than the other.."Thanks, Jassmine -- your analysis is very helpful. I'm not totally clear on where Arendt is headed with all this, but I think your point about hierarchy is on target. It sounds like she is going to criticize the traditional hierarchy of theory over practice. Actually, she takes issue both with the ancient and medieval tradition of theory/contemplation over action (Plato, Aristotle, Christianity) and with the modern reaction to it -- action over theory (Nietzsche, Marx.) Neither one describes the human condition adequately, and only God knows what human nature is.
I've finally finished the first chapter. And explanation and comments in this thread are invaluable to understanding Arend's writing. The part on Immortality and the Eternity reminded me of J.R.R. Tolkien's cosmology: his elves are immortal but bound to Arda (world) and decay with it, and his humans are mortal but connected to eternal life. Of course, it is primarily an interpretation of the Christian conception, while Arendt gives a broader picture; this image appeared too readily in my mind to ignore.
Arendt says that the "shortest, albeit superficial way" to indicate the difference between the political world and the world of pure thought is to "recall the distinction between immortality and eternity. I'm not totally convinced that immortality and eternity can be separated, but what I gather here is that immortality pertains to things people do that live on after them -- great deeds that are remembered, great works of art that appreciated long after the artist is dead (the sort of works we examine in this group, actually) while eternity pertains to pure ideas. David references the Republic @7 above, and I keep thinking of Plato too, but the part that comes to mind is the myth of the cave. Arendt references the cave as well, but she comes to a debatable conclusion: she says that politically speaking, the cave dweller dies to men in the "singularity" of the light. But Plato tells us that after the cave dweller is released and ascends the ladder to the bright light of pure metaphysical enlightenment, he has to return to the cave. He has to return to the active world where we all live, the vita activa, as we all have to. That's just an analogy, of course, but I think there's something true about it: we go up and down that ladder. We don't live in one world. We have public and private lives. Can they be so neatly separated?
Chris wrote: "Tamara wrote: I’m wondering if, in fact, we do live in a world, in which as she says, “speech has lost its power.” Arendt says, Men in the plural, that is, men in so far as they live and move and ..."Not only has the language of science become an alien language to nonprofessional people but also those who are responsible for making policies. The polemics are becoming polarized and we are unsure of how to deal with many of the scientific and technical progress that we are capable of, such as artificial intelligence and biomedicine, etc. not only because most of us don't really understand the full extent of the science behind it but also because we can't come to a conclusion that finds a meeting point among the dissenting plurality. We DO have a language for polemic argument but maybe we've lost the power to communicate across our differences which may have been easier when we actually understood what is behind the problem instead of believing that we know what the problem is.
Jassmine wrote: "David wrote: "Can't escaping human condition and expanding human abilities be actually the same thing? ..."Yes, not only the human condition of living on earth but lots of advances in human capabilities come to mind such as artificial intelligence and biomedicine.
Arendt has mentioned that action corresponds to the human condition of plurality and this reminded me of Ray Kurzweil's concept of singularity. (shivers)
Could somebody explain to me what Arendt meant by 'the very discovery of contemplation (theoria) as a human faculty, distinctly different from thought and reasoning'? How is contemplation different from thought and reasoning? Is contemplation something more inactive and quiet than thought and reasoning? Or is 'contemplation' abased as well as the vita activa, after its discovery as a 'human' faculty?
Thomas wrote: "Arendt says that the "shortest, albeit superficial way" to indicate the difference between the political world and the world of pure thought is to "recall the distinction between immortality and et..."That's a good point. This is something way off the topic but I've heard that introvert people are not complete antisocial hermits and occasionally have the need to engage in interpersonal interaction. (I'm a born introvert so I should know..) whereas extrovert people also have the occasional need for a quiet me-time. I think even monks and hermits have their time of human interaction as did Jesus and Zarathustra and Buddha, etc. We do find the worldly affairs all vanitas yet we can't help living without them whether mortal or immortal. I can't imagine anyone completely in eternity or vita contemplativa just because they find the vita activa futile, or maybe that's my limited mortal mind talking.
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 and giving them a product they consume. It can't be work since food is not an artifact. So it is still labor. The difference is I'm getting paid for it.
I guess what I'm asking is this: if we go with her definition of labor, do we need to draw a distinction between paid labor and unpaid labor?
I'm having the same questions so far. There is a blurry line between "labor" and "work" and I'm not convinced that we should draw a distinction between them.
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 hope everything will get clearer in the following chapters.
Thomas wrote: "What is the difference between human nature and the human condition? (Maybe this distinction will help us understand how she understands the term "human condition.")"She defines human nature the essence of being human, i.e., who we are as opposed to what we are, and the human condition are the conditions by and in which we exist, including those in which she is choosing to focus on defined as the Vita Activa, labor, work, and action. Note; for myself, I hope I am correct in this, I am classifying Vita Activa as practical or applied living, and Vita Contemplativa as theorhetical or hypothetical living.
In discussing the Augustinian question on the problem of human nature she echos the existentialist claim that existence precedes essence (human nature), in other words people (a collection of individual who) are thrust into existence like a manufactured things (a what), the chief difference being that manufactures objects come with a "manual" defining the object's purpose and use, i.e., essence, while human's do not and are responsible for making up their own essence. The point being we will probably never "discover" our essence but the conditions under which we struggle to define and determine our essence is being collectively referred to as the human condition.
She underscores this by saying even humans living on another planet would have to artificially re-create their human living conditions to survive and thus they would still be human which poses the interesting question, when would humans living on Mars cease being human and rightfully be called Martian?
David wrote: "She underscores this by saying even humans living on another planet would have to artificially re-create their human living conditions to survive and thus they would still be human which poses the interesting question, when would humans living on Mars cease being human and rightfully be called Martian?..."When would the ship of Theseus cease being the ship of Theseus?
Depending on what we understand by "Martian" or by "Human". One could say that anyone born on Mars is a Martian. Another would say that we will never be 100% Martians because we haven't evolved on Mars. Asimov wrote that we might have two political forces on Mars: the Humans and the Martians - basically same people identifying themselves as something different.
First, we have to define what it means to be human - I hope Arendt will help us with that.
Borum wrote: "Could somebody explain to me what Arendt meant by 'the very discovery of contemplation (theoria) as a human faculty, distinctly different from thought and reasoning'? How is contemplation different..."Since she is equating "contemplation" with theoria, I'm going to guess that she means it in the Greek sense, which she later explains is "unspeakable." For the Greeks, something that cannot be expressed in words is "a-logical", deprived of logos; the later Latin expression is "irrational" (or maybe a-rational). Both Plato and Aristotle say that the experience of theoria, the experience of pure ideas, is inexpressible, and for the Greeks, something that cannot be expressed cannot be reasoned (or thought) about.
For example, in the dialogue Meno, the boy solves the geometry problem not by reasoning, but in a flash of insight. This is unexplainable, which is why it is sometimes called Meno's paradox, or the "Learner's paradox." Socrates invents a strange story involving immortality of the soul to "explain" it, but it is never logically explained. The contemplative (or theoretical) is separated from things that can be logically/reasonably explained. (The Greek word theoria is rooted in the word meaning to see or behold -- it's something that you see or realize or contemplate, as opposed to reason about.)
David wrote: "She underscores this by saying even humans living on another planet would have to artificially re-create their human living conditions to survive and thus they would still be human which poses the interesting question, when would humans living on Mars cease being human and rightfully be called Martian? "What a great question! I'm not sure how Arendt would answer it just yet, but I will hazard a guess and say that humans become Martians when they are more at home on Mars than they are on Earth. As long as they are trying to re-create Earth (humus) on Mars, they are still human.
Thomas wrote: "Borum wrote: "Could somebody explain to me what Arendt meant by 'the very discovery of contemplation (theoria) as a human faculty, distinctly different from thought and reasoning'? How is contempla..."Thank you for the explanation, Thomas! The dialogue of Meno is a great example. So theoria is contemplation of the inexpressible and eternal whereas if it is put in some form of words or logic it becomes something expressed (or explained) and relegated to a position more down to earth and less transcendent as reason or thought with a 'trace' and thus permanent and potentially immortal.
However, I'm not so sure about her comment on Socrates. Although he didn't write down his thoughts, he DID leave traces (a lot by the sheer amount of works by just Plato alone) by his ever so engaging dialogues with virtually everyone and anyone in town. 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. As said before, one has to go back to the cave every now and then as long as we are in the condition of being surrounded by other humans.
I found her definition of mortality interesting. This is mortality: to move along a rectilinear line in a universe where everything, if it moves at all, moves in a cyclical order
She distinguishes the human lives from animals as an individual story with a beginning and an end. Without the life story that distinguishes human beings as an individual, the lives would be circular as a species goes on after each individual animal's death through procreation. A very anthropocentric point of view.
However, whereas what differs men from the immortal gods is mortality, she seems to place an importance on the life story that makes an individual being possible before the end comes. In the prologue, she says that the human condition of natality is the new beginning inherent in birth that can make itself felt in the world only because the newcomer possesses the capacity of beginning something anew, that is, of acting. Therefore in order to have this acting, or individual life story, one must first be born. So she puts an emphasis not only on mortality like the other classic philosophy and religions did, but on natality as a prerequisite human condition.
Thomas wrote: "Arendt says that the "shortest, albeit superficial way" to indicate the difference between the political world and the world of pure thought is to "recall the distinction between immortality and et..."I didn't really get the Aredt's take on Plato's cave, but throughout the book it shows that Arendt's not really an expert on Plato (later in the book she interprets one concept from Laws in a way that is a clear misunderstanding of the passage), so I kind of stopped taking her comments on Plato that seriously. (It really shows that she is an expert on Augustine.)
Coming back to it, it seems to me that her main point in this is that having a vision (= glimpsing the eternal) is by its very nature solitary (and so unpolitical).
What's interesting for me in this is... The man who gets out of Plato's cave is a philosopher, who glimpses the eternal/ideas and who comes back to the cave for the very reason that he is a philosopher and in Plato's political philosophy it's his duty to come back, because he is the best suited to rule (simplified version...). So, giving a Plato's cave as the example for the distinction between political and theoretical thought seems a bit... especially in Republic those two are very connected in his philosophy. In the cave myth no one really listens to the philosopher who has the knowledge of ideas/eternity, but theoretically if he was listened to then his knowledge of eternity could be a base for his immortality.
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.
We have public and private lives. Can they be so neatly separated? I feel like there is a historical difference - nowadays the private and public lives are definitely blending together, but I think in some historical periods it was much simpler to distinguish the two (especially considering that in some women practically had no public life...).
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 extrovert? I definitely couldn't do as much speaking in front of the crowds as he does 😂 But it's true that there are also the instances when he tries to run away from them...
I think it's impossible to "live in eternity" by it's very nature - eternity is something to be achieved by a contemplative life rather than something that is always present in it (I think). But yes, I get what you mean and I agree. Also, when we look at the antient philosophy, it's something that doesn't happen in solitude it's something that happens between people - Plato's philosophy is written down as dialogues, Aristotle's works are mostly notes for lectures and discussion seems to be essential.
Classics and the Western Canon
Books mentioned in this topic
Phaedrus (other topics)Laws (other topics)
A Room of One’s Own (other topics)
Arendt begins with a description of mankind's rebellion against the human condition and how science and technology are helping to expedite this. This "rebellion" is still very much with us -- she begins with the example of Sputnik in 1957, a grand achievement in human history. Today governments and entrepreneurs are spending billions on space travel and aerospace research while remaining relatively passive about the threat of climate change. But then she says that this book will not offer any solutions to this problem, which is a practical political one.
Instead, she proposes something simple, that we "think what we are doing." Not that we think about what we are doing, but that we literally think what we are doing. Often in philosophy, thinking (metaphysics and epistemology) and doing (physics and politics) are relegated to separate realms. What does she mean by "thinking what we are doing?"
Chapter I: Vita Activa and the Human Condition
For Arendt, "Vita Activa" is composed of three fundamental human activities: Work, Labor, and Action. It looks like we will have to define some terms. What are these things, and how does she differentiate them? Why does work, for example, need to be distinct from labor?
What is the difference between human nature and the human condition? (Maybe this distinction will help us understand how she understands the term "human condition.")
Why is it important that we note the difference between immortality and eternity?
Finally, what is your sense of Arendt's mission at this point? What is she setting out to prove, or is this more along the lines of a general examination of the Human Condition?