Arendt / The Human Condition - Chapter 1 summary

Following the prologue, chapter one of Hannah Arendt's The Human Condition sets the framework for her systematic study of the vita activa. The vita activa according to Arendt distinguished from the philosophical and theological tradition of vita contemplativa which that gave precedence to thinking over action. 

 

The vita activa

Her analysis of the human condition is made of three fundamental human activities. These will make up the later chapters of the human condition and include: 

Labor: Activities that support life and provide sustenance.

Work: Activities in which humans transcend nature by reshaping it into crafted objects.  

Action: Activities between individuals as part of forming a society. 

 Arednt stresses that every human activity, including being itself, is conditioned by the specific terms in which we exist. Nothing we do is out of time or place, and these set both the possibilities and impossibilities of what we can do. This basic premise is developed into radical insights into the human condition.

 

Birth, Eternity and Immortality

Arendt notes that the first action we ever did was to be born. Physical birth is also the birth of potential and the faculty of undertaking something new. But being born also means being sentenced to eventual death which is the end of all potential action. Arendt's key point is that philosophical traditon has tried to obscure this conditioned limitedness of the human existence by trying to appeal to eternal unchanging and unending truths (this is the vita contemplativa). 

Arendt on the other hand shows how humans are concerned not with eternity but with immortality. The difference between eternity and immortality is that immortality is within human existence since it is achieved by the trace of the things we do in the world. The quest for immortality is thus specific to the mortal who starts in birth and acts to try to leave a trace beyond his presence on earth.  

As set forth by the prologue and chapter 1, Arendt's objective in The Human Condition is to "rescue from oblivion the quest for immortality which had originally been the mainspring of vita activa", that is human action.

Back to: The Human Condition - summary and review

Hannah Arendt - bio and summary of main ideas and books

Arendt's The Human Condition: prologue - summary

In the prologue chapter of "The Human Condition" Hannah Arendt explains the central question of the book, the meaning of the active manner in which humans exist. The prologue offers two examples (current at the time of publication): the conquest of space and the automation of work.

 

The conquest of space

The conquest of space with the first man-made objects in the heavens is, according to Arendt, is the greatest change of the 20th century (even more than nuclear energy). This conquest of space sparks the “desire to escape earthly imprisonment (…), the desire to escape the human condition”. The human condition was always understood as bound to ground, and now for the first time this assumption was challenged by high-power rockets. Arendt sees this development as part of a secularization process, pushing God out of the sky and replacing him with man. 

 

The automation of work

The second subject discussed in Arendt's prologue is the automation of work. She considers the possibility that technical progress will free man from the arduousness of work. Arendt wonders what this prospect will do to people's relationship with what they do. If freedom is the freedom to act, what are we to make of a society in which acting is redundant, how can one earn his freedom then?. 

The object of Arendt's The Human Condition is to study those manners in which human action gains significance. She explains that she will answer this question in two ways which make up the structure of the book. It opens with a systematic analysis of three modes of the human condition: labor, work and activity. The second part applies this analysis and conceptual frame to a historical study of modern society and modern era. Ahead of these two part Arendt includes another initial discussion on the human condition and the distinction between the public sphere and the private sphere.

Next summary: Chapter one: The Human Condition (vita activa)

Back to: The Human Condition by Hannah Arendt - Summary and Review

Hannah Arendt - bio and summary of main ideas and books