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In this text, Hannah Arendt considers humankind from the perspective of the actions of which it is capable. The problems are identified as diminishing human agency and political freedom - the paradox that as human powers increase through technological and humanistic inquiry, we are less equipped to control the consequences of our actions. This edition contains an expanded index and an introduction that analyzes the text's argument and its present relevance.
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75 of 79 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
_The Human Condition_ (hereafter HC) is a strange and rare exmaple of political and social theory. Standing outside the mainstream of academic discourses, it has an unusual structure and pays scant regard to conventional modes of argument. As Margaret Canovan tells us, in her excellent, succinct introduction, Arendt ignored mainstream debates and ploughed through the quagmire of philosophy and culture in order to present her own highly original and deep conclusions.
HC is a vast and deep work that has many complex themes and lines of argument which seem to weave in and out of each other, sometimes slowly and obviously; more often than not sharply and seemingly without reason. As a result, one contention of hers, that humans have the great and miraculous capacity for the unexpected, is all the more convincing. Arendt in this book has thrown a lot at us, too much to consider after one reading. This is a book I will have to read again, and I daresay again and again.
Most obviously HC is concerned with the rise of technology and the Weberian/Frankfurt School theme of technological/rational domination, and with the more vicious and madly rampaging consumer economy, a capitalist system out of control. The book laments the loss of public glory and action, and stresses that human beings have seemingly surrendered themselves to forces and processes they cannot control, particulrly with regrd to modern science. (Reflection on the current and ongoing ecological uncertainty we face might seem to confirm this.)
Arendt is most famous for her celebration of political action and public-spiritedness, and looks to the ancient Greek polis as a from of participatory democracy. It is a heartening message in our times where 'democracy' is manipulated and politics is more market-driven than ever. But she is not utopian, and strongly criticises those who seek to find an ultimate harmony among human beings that does not exist. Human affairs are fragile: humans are plural and mortal, they can set off processes beyond their control and events have unintended consequences (she cites the Reformation and the rise of capitalist soicety - I would add Plague to that, too). History is almost a series of accidents.
My tradition is mostly within the Hegel-Marx school of philosophy, one which comes in for some great criticism by Arendt. Ultimately Hegel and Marx see in history a kind of progress toward an ultimate goal, so that everyone is a mouth-piece of the Zeitgeist. They do not recognise the contingency or frailty of human affairs, their capacity to do the unexpected.
8 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book is for those few courageous souls who dare look at today and "think what they are doing". Arendt's writing has stood the test of time -- many of her disclosures are actually more visible today than they were in the 1950s when she wrote this treatise.
She must have been aware that this book would be for a limited readership, for readers who before such a work of truth and genius would want to make themselves deserving of the work by modelling their own thinking on it whilst attempting to perpetuate the spirit that animates it, even to surpass it.
Arendt along with Heidegger made thinking possible, even greater than it ever has been, after the collapse of ideological systems into absurdity and the absurd belief in scientific conventions. Thanks to them one activity at least has been preserved and saved from consumer/slavish/egoic society: that of thinking and the transmission it entails.
She must have been aware that this book would be for a limited readership, for readers who before such a work of truth and genius would want to make themselves deserving of the work by modelling their own thinking on it whilst attempting to perpetuate the spirit that animates it, even to surpass it.
Arendt along with Heidegger made thinking possible, even greater than it ever has been, after the collapse of ideological systems into absurdity and the absurd belief in scientific conventions. Thanks to them one activity at least has been preserved and saved from consumer/slavish/egoic society: that of thinking and the transmission it entails.
10 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is simply one of the best books I have ever read. It's been a while since I last visted it but the analysis of consumer society in here is startling. People accused Arendt of "polis envy", such was her regard for the political structure of the Greek city state. "But they were built on slavery!" you might object, and Arendt is aware of this, but for her it was a necessary institution to allow some full citezins exercise their full rights. Without having slaves to take care of all the activites relating to the life-process (production and consumption, necessity) the citezins of the state would be bound by this cycle of unfreedom.
For Arendt, public space is where people should precisely prove their freedom from the eternal recurrance of necessity and it also provided an arena where other free men could witness (and remember) acts from thier fellow citezins that exceeded expectations. In order to create this situation, a clear public (freedom), private (necessity) devide was necessary. I seem to remember her saying something about the "gulf that every citezin stepped across each morning as they left thier home" and how the immensity of this act was unimaginable today. Her conception of consumer society is that it involves the socialising of the "life process" - instead of being kept behind closed doors as the "biological" inheritance that freemen had to transcend, it was now the motor of society...you went out to work in order to earn enough to survive and so on. Although this might be an advance from a society founded on slavery in someways, it was responsible for a general banalisation as nothing escaped and transcended this cycle. There was a generalised condition of slavery as the concept of "freedom" was whittled down. On this point her thought is very reminiscent of the Situationists.
This is the overarching narrative I best recall from the book - but it is full of fascinating insites and elaboration on this theme. This is certainly Arendt's most original work.
For Arendt, public space is where people should precisely prove their freedom from the eternal recurrance of necessity and it also provided an arena where other free men could witness (and remember) acts from thier fellow citezins that exceeded expectations. In order to create this situation, a clear public (freedom), private (necessity) devide was necessary. I seem to remember her saying something about the "gulf that every citezin stepped across each morning as they left thier home" and how the immensity of this act was unimaginable today. Her conception of consumer society is that it involves the socialising of the "life process" - instead of being kept behind closed doors as the "biological" inheritance that freemen had to transcend, it was now the motor of society...you went out to work in order to earn enough to survive and so on. Although this might be an advance from a society founded on slavery in someways, it was responsible for a general banalisation as nothing escaped and transcended this cycle. There was a generalised condition of slavery as the concept of "freedom" was whittled down. On this point her thought is very reminiscent of the Situationists.
This is the overarching narrative I best recall from the book - but it is full of fascinating insites and elaboration on this theme. This is certainly Arendt's most original work.
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