The Human Condition

1. Modern Anxieties Signal a Crisis in Human Activity

What I propose, therefore, is very simple: it is nothing more than to think what we are doing.

Sputnik and automation. The launch of Sputnik and the rise of automation in the 1950s highlight profound shifts in the human condition. Sputnik represents humanity's potential escape from Earth, while automation promises liberation from labor. These events, however, are met with anxiety rather than triumph, suggesting a deeper crisis.

Rebellion against given existence. Humanity seems possessed by a desire to escape its earthly limitations and remake itself through science and technology. This rebellion challenges natural boundaries and raises fundamental questions about what it means to be human. The ability to destroy organic life or create artificial life forces us to confront choices that science alone cannot answer.

Thoughtlessness prevails. Despite unprecedented power, a pervasive "thoughtlessness" characterizes the age. We are capable of incredible feats but struggle to understand their meaning or consequences. Arendt calls for a reconsideration of human activities from the vantage point of these new experiences and fears, urging us to simply "think what we are doing."

2. The Vita Activa: Labor, Work, and Action

With the term vita activa, I propose to designate three fundamental human activities: labor, work, and action.

Three core activities. Arendt distinguishes three fundamental human activities that correspond to basic conditions of life on Earth. These are labor, work, and action, forming the core of the "active life." Each activity is distinct and relates differently to the human condition.

Labor, work, action defined.

• Labor: Corresponds to the biological process, necessary for survival of the individual and species. Its condition is life itself.
• Work: Corresponds to the unnaturalness of human existence, building an artificial world of durable things. Its condition is worldliness.
• Action: Corresponds to plurality, the fact that men live among men, revealing unique identities through speech and deed. Its condition is plurality.

Rooted in natality and mortality. All three activities are tied to birth and death. Labor ensures survival, work provides durability against mortality, and action, especially through founding political bodies, creates remembrance and history. Action is most closely linked to natality, as each new birth brings the capacity for new beginnings.

3. Ancient Distinction: Private Household vs. Public Polis

According to Greek thought, the human capacity for political organization is not only different from but stands in direct opposition to that natural association whose center is the home (oikia) and the family.

Opposing realms. Ancient Greeks sharply distinguished the private realm of the household (oikia) from the public realm of the city-state (polis). The household was the sphere of necessity, ruled by the head to ensure survival. The polis was the sphere of freedom, where citizens met as equals.

Necessity vs. freedom. Activities in the household, like labor, were driven by needs and wants, considered prepolitical and even slavish. Freedom was found exclusively in the polis, where citizens engaged in action and speech, transcending mere life maintenance. Mastering necessity in the private sphere was a prerequisite for freedom in the public.

Equality among peers. Equality in the polis meant living among peers, free from the rule/being ruled dynamic of the household. This equality was not universal but presupposed a class of "unequals" (slaves, foreigners) who remained outside the political realm. Courage was the key virtue, needed to leave the safety of the private and enter the exposed public space.

4. The Rise of the Social Realm Blurs Boundaries

The emergence of society—the rise of housekeeping, its activities, problems, and organizational devices—from the shadowy interior of the household into the light of the public sphere, has not only blurred the old borderline between private and political, it has also changed almost beyond recognition the meaning of the two terms and their significance for the life of the individual and the citizen.

Household goes public. The modern age saw the rise of a new realm, the "social," where activities formerly confined to the private household entered the public sphere. Housekeeping and economic concerns became collective matters, transforming political organization into a form of "collective housekeeping" or national economy.

Behavior replaces action. Society demands conformity and expects members to behave according to norms, rather than act uniquely. This emphasis on behavior, measurable and predictable, is the basis for modern social sciences like economics and statistics. It contrasts sharply with the ancient public realm, which was reserved for individual distinction through action.

Equality of conformism. Modern equality, unlike ancient political equality, is based on the conformism inherent in society. It is an equality of sameness, resembling the equality of household members before the head, but now enforced by the collective power of society itself. This social equality has conquered the public realm, making distinction a private matter.

5. Labor: The Cyclical Necessity of Life

Whatever labor produces is meant to be fed into the human life process almost immediately, and this consumption, regenerating the life process, produces—or rather, reproduces—new “labor power,” needed for the further sustenance of the body.

Metabolism with nature. Labor is the activity tied to the body's metabolism with nature, producing necessities for immediate consumption. This process is cyclical and unending, dictated by the biological needs of the living organism. Its products, like food, are quickly consumed and disappear.

Productivity as fertility. The modern age, especially through Marx, glorified labor for its "productivity." However, this productivity is not in creating durable things but in the sheer fertility of human "labor power," capable of producing a surplus beyond immediate needs. This surplus, like nature's abundance, is tied to the potential multiplication of life.

Futility and worldlessness. Labor is inherently futile from a worldly perspective, leaving nothing lasting behind. The animal laborans, driven by necessity, is absorbed in the life process itself, oblivious to the world of durable things. This worldlessness is distinct from active withdrawal; it is an imprisonment within the body's needs.

6. Work: Building a Durable Human World

The durability of the human artifice is not absolute; the use we make of it, even though we do not consume it, uses it up.

Fabricating the world. Work, the activity of homo faber, creates the artificial world of things that provides stability and permanence to human existence. Unlike labor's products, the products of work are meant to be used, not consumed, and possess a durability that outlasts individual lives.

Reification and permanence. Work involves reification, transforming material into durable objects under the guidance of a model or idea. This process requires strength and an element of violence against nature (e.g., cutting down a tree). The permanence of the model, surviving the finished product, influenced Plato's doctrine of ideas.

Utility and meaninglessness. The world of work is governed by the categories of means and ends, utility and usefulness. However, a strictly utilitarian perspective struggles to find ultimate meaning, as every end can become a means to a further end. The question "What is the use of use?" highlights this dilemma, leading to a potential devaluation of the world itself.

7. Action: Revealing Identity and Starting New Beginnings

With word and deed we insert ourselves into the human world, and this insertion is like a second birth, in which we confirm and take upon ourselves the naked fact of our original physical appearance.

Speech and deed. Action and speech are the activities through which humans appear to each other as unique individuals, revealing "who" they are. This disclosure is distinct from revealing "what" they are (qualities, talents). It is an initiative, a "second birth," responding to the fact of natality.

Plurality and uniqueness. Action is possible only among a plurality of distinct individuals. If everyone were the same, action and speech would be unnecessary. Uniqueness is the human expression of distinctness, making each person a beginner capable of starting something new and unexpected.

The web of relationships. Action and speech create a "web" of human relationships, an intangible but real in-between that exists wherever people live together. This web is the realm of human affairs, where stories are enacted and revealed, though no single actor is the author of the overall narrative.

8. The Frailty of Action: Unpredictability and Irreversibility

The frailty of human institutions and laws and, generally, of all matters pertaining to men’s living together, arises from the human condition of natality and is quite independent of the frailty of human nature.

Boundlessness and unpredictability. Action, unlike work, is never performed in isolation and its consequences are boundless and unpredictable. Acting into the web of relationships means every reaction can become a chain reaction, affecting others in unforeseen ways. This unpredictability is inherent, not merely due to complexity.

Irreversibility. Once an action is performed, its consequences cannot be undone. The actor is caught in the process they started, becoming both the doer and the sufferer of their deeds. This irreversibility, coupled with unpredictability, makes the realm of human affairs inherently fragile and uncertain.

Escape into rule. Throughout history, there has been a temptation to escape action's frailty by substituting it with making or ruling. Monarchy, tyranny, and even certain forms of democracy based on command and obedience attempt to impose the reliability of fabrication onto human affairs. This eliminates plurality and the public realm, but cannot eliminate the unexpected.

9. Action's Remedies: Forgiveness and the Power of Promise

The possible redemption from the predicament of irreversibility—of being unable to undo what one has done though one did not, and could not, have known what he was doing—is the faculty of forgiving.

Forgiving the past. The remedy for the irreversibility of action is the faculty of forgiving. Forgiveness releases both the doer and the sufferer from the consequences of a deed, breaking the chain reaction of vengeance. It is an unexpected reaction that acts anew, unconditioned by the past.

Promising the future. The remedy for the unpredictability of the future is the faculty to make and keep promises. Promises create "islands of security" in the uncertain ocean of the future, providing reliability in human relationships. They allow for a limited form of sovereignty over the future.

Dependent on plurality. Both forgiveness and promising are potentialities of action itself and depend entirely on the presence of others. No one can forgive themselves or be bound by a promise made only to themselves. These faculties establish principles for living together based on mutual release and mutual binding, distinct from self-rule.

10. The Archimedean Point and World Alienation

Without actually standing where Archimedes wished to stand (dos moi pou stō), still bound to the earth through the human condition, we have found a way to act on the earth and within terrestrial nature as though we dispose of it from outside, from the Archimedean point.

Looking from outside. The invention of the telescope and the rise of modern science allowed humanity to view the Earth from a cosmic perspective, achieving an "Archimedean point." This point outside the Earth enabled the discovery of universal laws applicable to both celestial and terrestrial bodies.

Earth and world alienation. This cosmic perspective led to "earth alienation," a detachment from immediate earthly surroundings. Coupled with the "world alienation" caused by the expropriation of property and the rise of wealth accumulation, it created a modern condition where man is increasingly estranged from both nature and the human artifice.

Science of process. Modern science became a science of process, seeking to understand "how" things come into being rather than "what" they are. The experiment, which imitates natural processes, became the key method. This approach, rooted in the human capacity for action (starting processes), transformed nature into a system of processes.

11. The Modern Reversal: Activity Over Contemplation

The radicality of this reversal is somehow obscured by another kind of reversal, with which it is frequently identified and which, since Plato, has dominated the history of Western thought.

Contemplation's decline. The modern age saw a fundamental reversal of the traditional hierarchy where the vita contemplativa was superior to the vita activa. Truth and knowledge were no longer seen as passively received through contemplation but actively produced through doing. Contemplation itself became meaningless.

Thinking serves doing. Thinking was reduced to a handmaiden of doing, becoming "reckoning with consequences." Certainty was found not in beholding eternal truths but in introspection and mathematical reasoning, dealing only with what the mind itself produced. This led to a focus on processes within the mind.

Homo faber's rise. Initially, the activities of homo faber (making, fabricating) rose to prominence, as scientific knowledge was won through instruments and experiments. The experiment itself is a form of making, imitating natural processes. Productivity and creativity became high ideals, reflecting the standards of the builder.

12. The Victory of the Animal Laborans and Potential Passivity

It is quite conceivable that the modern age—which began with such an unprecedented and promising outburst of human activity—may end in the deadliest, most sterile passivity history has ever known.

Life as the highest good. The ultimate victory in the modern age went not to homo faber but to the animal laborans. This was facilitated by the Christian emphasis on the sacredness of life, which survived secularization. Life itself, the biological process, became the highest good, overriding all other human capacities.

Society of laborers. The rise of society meant the life process of the species asserted itself. Labor, the activity tied to this process, became the dominant human activity, reducing all others to means for "making a living." Productivity was equated with the fertility of life, leading to an emphasis on abundance and consumption.

Threat of passivity. The modern age's triumph over necessity through automation risks creating a society of laborers without labor. Spare time is consumed, and the focus on the life process and consumption threatens to annihilate the world of durable things and the space for action. This could lead to a sterile passivity, despite unprecedented power. However, the inherent capacity for action, rooted in natality, remains a source of potential new beginnings.

Last updated: May 27, 2025