4.0
The Human Condition
ByPublisher Description
A work of striking originality,
is in many respects more relevant today than when it first appeared in 1958. In her study of the state of modern humanity, Hannah Arendt considers humankind in terms of its ever-expanding capabilities. Her analysis reveals a troubling paradox: that as human powers increase through technological and humanistic inquiry, we are less equipped to control the consequences of our actions.
This new edition contains Margaret Canovan's 1998 introduction and a new foreword by Danielle Allen. A classic in political and social theory,
offers a penetrating analysis of a conundrum that has only become more acute in the 21st century.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesThe Human Condition Reviews
4.0
“A big thank you to Arendt for beautifully formatting her writing. It is not very often that I come across a philosophical author whose writing is so easy to read.
Arendt begins her book by describing the Vita Activa, which is divided into three parts: labor, work, and action. Labor aids individual survival, work engages in the creative, and action is the highest good, which preserves the political and creates history. Arendt identifies how there was a hierarchical collapse in the three activities as a result of Galileo’s invention of the telescope- pretty bizarre if you ask me. This hierarchical shift has led to a degradation in how we work now compared to how people worked then. Our work now is aimed at completing something in the hopes that it will be memorialized in history, and this degrades the dignity of what work is supposed to be for us. Presently, we are still stuck in the hierarchical collapse, and this impacts the Vita Contemplativa, our ability to contemplate.
Arendt's closing remarks center on the idea that the modern world does not define the modern age, but by a shift in human activity in which the laborer has replaced the craftsman and the citizen.”
About Hannah Arendt
is widely considered one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century. The University of Chicago Press also publishes her
and
, as well as
.
is an English political theorist who has published widely on Arendt. Her books include
and
is James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University, and Director of Harvard's Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics and the author, most recently, of
Other books by Hannah Arendt
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