Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:00:27 — 110.3MB)
On The Human Condition (1958), Prologue and Sections 1 and 2.
How has our distinction between the private and public evolved over time? Arendt uses this history, and chiefly the differences between our time and ancient Athens, to launch a critique of modern society. In thinking about public, practical necessities like the economy, we've lost sight of the distinction between labor (what we need to do to sustain ourselves), work (the creation of things that will last longer than our lifespan), and political action (which needs to involve a real dialogue among equals, not the rote party posturing driven by economic interests that we have now).
We've become a society of laborers, defining ourselves in terms of our jobs and looking at politics as chiefly tasked with economic administration, which is kind of like national housekeeping. "The social" has erased the distinction between public and private realms, crushing us with its demands for conformity and leaving the private realm as merely "the intimate." We need both robust political engagement and a space for deep, private contemplation in order to live fully and avoid catastrophic political blunders (e.g., creating technologies that will destroy us).
The fab four conducted this podcast live at the Pittsburgh Continental Philosophy Conference.
Read more about the topic and get the book.
End song: "Space" by Mark Lint. Read about it.
Seth B says
October 13, 2015 at 11:32 pmIt’s not particularly surprising that Arendt criticizes capitalism for being too slavish to the public good. As discussed in episode 123, capitalism is often justified as a means to an end, where this end is some measure of the public good.
I also find it unlikely that the ‘independent households’ of ancient Athens never traded with each other (i.e. participated in an economy) and therefore ‘expanded the private’. Of course, I think capitalism is often a very positive force for diversity.
Sam B says
October 17, 2015 at 9:35 amHey guys, could you cover some Max Stirner soon? After all Halloween is coming up and we could use some spookiness.. Hehe
Erin says
October 19, 2015 at 6:23 pmOn her idea of political action: Arendt is certainly a problematic thinker who wrote in trains of (often convoluted and complex) thought. In The Human Condition, her idea of action is most closely tied to her idea of ‘plurality’, and the polis here for her epitomizes the twofold disclosure of the self and the world together with others through speech-as-action in politics. Politics for Arendt rests on the idea that we are born into the-world-with-others (in a twist on the Heideggerian phenomenology), and that equality is based on our being-in-the-world but our ‘being’ is distinct from others’s because we are each unique human beings.
As for the other part of her idea of political action, it’s in On Revolution that you see her idea of action as ‘deeds’ unfold as the creation of the ‘new’ in history, which is based in the inherent capacity for freedom and
‘new beginnings’ in each new human being born into the world. Really interesting stuff (I’m currently writing a chapter of my PhD thesis on Arendt’s idea of world and political action that reconstructs these ideas from across her works).
dmf says
October 26, 2015 at 3:22 pmhttp://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:abo:tlg,0086,035:1:1253a
Paul Smith says
March 9, 2017 at 1:26 pmI’ve listened to this episode a couple of times, and I read most of the book (though I haven’t quite made it all the way through the last two chapters.) This most recent time, there were a couple of points that struck me as important.
First of all, I think there was something missed in the discussion of money being a problem. This may be fleshed out in chapters you didn’t cover, but the problem with money has to do with consummability, The products of labor are always consumable and create no sense of permanence in the world. In a sense, money only exists for the purposes of consumption, and I think it turns all objects of production into consumible objects, which are inherently temporary. Previously, work was the domain of creating durable objects, but as work has become subsumed by labor (notably in the factory), the very objects of our lives and our place in the world has become temporary. Because of this, there is a loss of any sense of our actions being carried on in a world beyond us.
This brings me to my second point, regarding the political and action. While I can’t say that I have a full understanding of what Arendt considers political action, I think that politics being the place where human beings can reveal themselves points us in the right direction. The political occurs in the world of appearance, and it is where people can make themselves known. It is also most closely associated with a permanent world, and the fruits of action go beyond the mere durability of work objects and relate to the continuation of society itself.
With the loss of the durability of work and the permanence of action, our very lives become transitory and meaningless because our only activity becomes consumptive, which leaves nothing behind.
Conor says
May 22, 2020 at 5:12 amNot so sure that she’s gone very far beyond Marx in the idea of mass social labour restricting freedom. In fairness to Marx this was a huge theme in his early work especially the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts.
Says the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
“First, from the product, which as soon as it is created is taken away from its producer. Second, in productive activity (work) which is experienced as a torment. Third, from species-being, for humans produce blindly and not in accordance with their truly human powers. Finally, from other human beings, where the relation of exchange replaces the satisfaction of mutual need.”
Also the great quote from Marx in the Communist Manifesto:
“All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind. The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe.”
Of course, in practice, Communist / Stalinist / Maoist societies did end up with Labour in a similar alienated position..