The Human Condition (book)

The Human Condition, first published in 1958, Hannah Arendt's account of how "human activities" should be and have been understood throughout Western history. Arendt is interested in the vita activa (active life) as contrasted with the vita contemplativa (contemplative life) and concerned that the debate over the relative status of the two has blinded us to important insights about the vita activa and the way in which it has changed since ancient times. She distinguishes three sorts of activity (labor, work, and action) and discusses how they have been affected by changes in Western history.

Arendt introduces the term vita activa (active life) by distinguishing it from vita contemplativa (contemplative life). Ancient philosophers insisted upon the superiority of the vita contemplativa, for which the vita activa merely provided necessities. Marx flipped the hierarchy, claiming that the vita contemplative is merely a superstructure on the fundamental basic life-processes of a society. Arendt's thesis is that the concerns of the vita activa are neither superior nor inferior to those of the vita contemplativa, nor are they the same. The 'vita activa' may be divided into three sorts of activities: labor, work and action.

According to Arendt, ancient Greek life was divided between two realms: the public realm in which "action" was performed, and the private realm, site of the household ruled by its head. The mark of the private was not intimacy, as it is in modern times, but biological necessity. In the private realm, heads of households took care of needs for food, shelter, and sex. By contrast, the public realm was a realm of freedom from these biological necessities, a realm in which one could distinguish oneself through "great words and great deeds." Property requirements for citizenship reflected the understanding that unless one was able to take care of one's biological necessities, one could not be free from them and hence could not participate in the public realm as a free person among equals. Slaves and subordinated women were confined to the private realm where they met the biological necessities of the head of the household. The public realm naturally was accorded higher status than the private.

With the fall of the Roman Empire, the church took over the role of the public realm (though its otherworldly orientation gave it a character distinct from the previous public realm), and the feudal lords ran their lands and holdings as private realms. The modern period saw the rise of a third realm, the social realm. The social realm is concerned with providing for biological needs, but it does so at the level of the state. Arendt views the social realm as a threat to both the private and the public realm. In order to provide for the needs of everyone, it must invade the private sphere, and because it makes biological needs a public matter, it corrupts the realm of free action: There is no longer a realm free from necessity.

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