Presentation of Hannah Arendt

1. Some biographical data, bibliography, and thought of the author.

Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) was born in Hanover, Germany into a family of

Jewish origin. Studied in Königsberg, Marburg, Freiburg, and Heidelberg. Was a disciple
from Heidegger, Husserl, and Jaspers. He obtained his doctorate in philosophy under the guidance of

Jaspers on the concept of love in Saint Augustine (1929). In 1933, with the rise of
Hitler came to power, emigrated to France, and in 1941 had to flee to the United States.

establishing in New York, where in 1950, she became a naturalized American and taught in
various universities (Berkeley, Princeton, Columbia, and Chicago). He worked as
director of research at the Conference on Jewish Relations (1944-1946) and as
collaborator of various periodicals such as Review of Politics, Jewish
Social Studies, Partisan Review and Nation.
She is considered a bold and original thinker of the 20th century, who asserts:
I do not feel like a philosopher in any way and I also do not believe I have been received in the

circle of the philosophers.1So it is difficult to categorize it into any school.

philosophical, especially considering the complexity of her person: thinker,
woman and Jewish. In any case, she divided her activities between philosophy and theory.
politics providing key concepts for contemporary thought. On the other hand,
promotes the emergence of a philosophical tradition whose concepts are abstract for
take new categories to think that part of a phenomenology of inheritance
Heideggerian. It attempts a reconnection with the Greek world. It takes up Aristotle in order to...

to recover the idea of depolarization and show how in the world of politics it has been lost
contact with the genealogy of the term. It provides theoretical tools that allow
to value the meaning of the individual's human and social life.
For her part, Elisabeth Young-Bruehl in 'Reflections on the Life of Hannah Arendt'2
proposes to read the evolution of his thought based on the category of 'deparia', used
by our author in Rahel Varnhagen: life of a Jewish woman (1958). The pari is a
stateless, a rootless person, an outsider. The category of statelessness begins to designate a

perspective, a theoretical place, meaning that it organizes what is seen not only for the

knowledge but also for life. It has the task of being alert to the unexpected,

1
Hannah Arendt in the interview conducted by Günter Gauss in 1964. Cf. CRUZ, Manuel;
"Introduction" in ARENDT, H; The Human Condition, Paidós, Buenos Aires, 2007. Page XIII.
2
In Western Magazine. 23, April 1983 (21-42).

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the observation of how events occur and the structure of history. The thought of
Arendt transitions from her particular experience, the condition of a pariah, to a theory of
public. The opposite figure to the pariah is that of the parvenu newcomer: the social climber, a

social climber. A person who needs to assimilate into the world, to the point of denying themselves.

same, to not feel separated from him. (p. II).

Among her works, we can mention The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), The
condición humana(1958),RahelVarnhagen: vida de una mujer judía(1958),Entre el
past and the future (1961), Eichmann in Jerusalem. A study on the banality of
mal(1963),Sobre la revolución(1965),Hombres en tiempos de oscuridad(1968),
Sobre la violencia(1970),La crisis de la república(1972),La tradición oculta(1976),
The Life of the Spirit (1978)
In the origins of totalitarianism rejects totalitarian ideas because it maintains
that act through fundamentalisms that do not take the human being into account. Arendt
It also rescues individual freedom and democracy. It notes that the regime
totalitarianism depersonalizes the subject by transforming social classes into masses, yielding
the power to the police and implementing a foreign policy aimed at the
world domination. It argues that under totalitarian regimes, modern masses
they have neither identity, nor roots, nor common interests.
In the human condition, it gives us tools that allow us to assess the
meaning of individual and social human life. Reflecting from Aristotle
about the human condition and rejects any form of totalitarianism. Marx to him
allowed to find the reasons for violence and revolution from the novelty of its
thought: work makes the man, violence is the midwife of history and the
Philosophers have interpreted the world, and what it is about is transforming it.
that man is no longer determined by reason or by the Judeo-Christian God but
through work as a result of a human and social transformation.
Our author, influenced by Husserl and Heidegger, reflects on being and
it argues that the idea of man must disappear to make way for the human gender
that man only exists as plurality. Hannah Arendt allows us to rethink and
reformulate the meaning of politics from individual existence considering the
differences in public coexistence. From birth we enter into being and
we share with others the otherness that is inherent to man. All men who

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we inhabit the earth and live among equals, we are conditioned by them since
that human plurality is the law of the land and the condition of politics.
His prestige grew in both Europe and America. He dedicated his life to the
reflection and always actively participated in the public sphere and was interested in the
dignity of republican action. Arendt was original in terms of thought and
he never wanted to abandon that condition. He spent his last years teaching in
the New School for Social Research, died in 1975.

The Human Condition: Chapters 1 and 2

The work The Human Condition originates from a series of lectures given at the
University of Chicago in 1956 titled as Vita activa. Her first writings are
dates back to the early 1950s and was published in 1958. In it, Arendt.
develops the notion of birthrate on which he bases his thought opposing that of
Heidegger, given that men are not born to die but to begin something new
in the world, which is constituted intersubjectively. It refers to the conditions
basics of the active life of the human being, which specifies with the terms 'labor',
“trabajo”, y “acción”.

We rescue from the prologue

Hannah Arendt tells us that it is a reconsideration of the condition

human from our fears and experiences – after the dramatic events
occurred in the 20th century – and proposes as a central theme 'thinking about what we do'
uniting theory and human action. Therefore, the work is a discussion about labor, the
work and action as inherent and basic activities to the human condition that
allow human beings to inhabit the Earth.

It asserts that the Modern Age (17th to 20th centuries), from its historical contexts,
scientific, social, and political, was born with the first atomic explosions. Arendt did not
discusses this modern world but conducts an analysis of human capabilities
general principles that arise from the condition of man and that are permanent. Through
this historical study aims to trace the alienation of the modern world through time,
his double flight: from the earth to the universe, and from the world to the self, to his origins, in order to

to come to understand the nature of society as it developed and presented itself

when it was defeated by a new era.

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 Chapter I: The Human Condition

1. Active life is the human condition

The concept of active design: labor, work, and action, which correspond to the
which has basically been given to man in earthly life. Labor: it refers to the
biological activity of the human body. Process of life. The human condition of the
Labor is life itself. Work: it is the unnatural demand of man.
It provides an 'artificial world' of things. The human condition of work is the
Mundanity. As long as action is the only activity that takes place among men,
corresponds to the human condition of plurality and to the fact that men
live on Earth and inhabit the world.

Hannah Arendt asserts that all aspects of the human condition are
related to politics, but it is this plurality of action that corresponds.
specifically to political life. (p 22)

In its elemental form, the human condition of action is even implicit

in Genesis. 'Plurality is the condition of human action because everyone
we are the same, that is to say, humans, and therefore no one is the same as any other that has existed

lived, live or will live" (p 22).

These activities and their conditions are closely related to a

more general condition of human existence: birth and death. Thus, the labor
ensures individual survival and also the life of the species. The work and the
products made by man give permanence and duration to mortal life and to
time. And action, while establishing and preserving political bodies, creates the
condition for memory, for history (p 22).

Labor, work, and action are rooted in birth, as they have the mission
to provide and preserve the flow of newcomers. But, of the three, the action
maintains the closest relationship with the human condition of birth. The newborn
arrival has the capacity to act, to take initiative. It is inherent to all activities
humans. Action is the political activity par excellence, which is why birth rate and not
mortality, it can be the central category of political thought. Action is
inherent to political life because it always brings the novelty of starting anew.

All men are conditioned beings inasmuch as all the things with which
come into contact and become a condition of their existence. Existing things

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in the world are a product of human action. And these objects, in turn, the
condition as producers. Anything that comes into contact with life
humanity immediately takes on the character of a condition of human existence. That is why
Men are always conditioned beings. There is no more essence, it produces a
break with metaphysics. The shock of the reality of the world on existence
humanity is received and felt as a conditioning force. The objectivity of the world and the
human condition complement each other since human existence is
conditional existence.

The human condition is the same as human nature. The greatest change
radical would be the life of man for example, on another planet, it would be given by
conditions created by man to make it possible, because naturally another
The planet does not offer the possibilities for life that Earth has.

If we have a nature or essence, only a god can know and define it, and
the first requirement would be that I spoke to someone (myself, to myself) as if I were a
what (I am, to God). This fails if we ask, 'And who are we?' Due to
this, when trying to define human nature, a God has been appealed to, who
since Plato it has revealed itself as a kind of Platonic idea of man, what
raises suspicions about the concept of 'human nature' (p 24-25).

Likewise, the conditions of human existence: life itself, birth and

mortality, mundanity, plurality and the Earth, can never explain what we are or
answer the question of who we are because they do not condition us absolutely.
This has been the opinion of philosophy in contrast to the sciences (anthropology,
psychology, biology, etc.) that also deal with man. The truth is that, although
we have lived and will probably continue living under earthly conditions, no
we are simple creatures subject to the Earth (p 25).

2. The expression active life

The expression active life is very old. It is loaded with tradition and emerged from
trial that Socrates was subjected to and the conflict between the philosopher and the polis. Active life

means 'life dedicated to public-political affairs' (p 25-26).

Aristotle distinguished three modes of life that men could choose.

requirement excluded all those who had lost their free disposal of their

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movements and activities (slave, artisan, and merchant). These three ways of life
they share their interest in the beautiful (in what is neither necessary nor useful): a) the life of the

bodily pleasures in which the beautiful is consumed; b) life dedicated to affairs

from the city, where excellence produces beautiful deeds, and c) the life of the philosopher
dedicated to inquiring and contemplating eternal things, in whose beauty nothing can interfere.
man neither changes for the consumption of them (p 26).

Active life in the Middle Ages, the political life, meant only the affairs
humans accentuating the action -praxis- necessary to establish and maintain it. The
labor and work produced what was necessary and useful, they were not free. The Greeks understood.
like the life of the police, the political organization freely elected as a way
necessary to keep men united within an order. So that,
freedom, action and politics appear together and are co-involved. In contrast, the way of life
the despot, being a necessity, was not considered free and therefore had no relationship with
political illusions (p 26-27).

The expression "active life" lost its specific political meaning denoting
active commitment to the things of this world. Labor and work, as action
human, they did not rise to the hierarchy of life dedicated to politics. Action was
he considered the needs of earthly life and left himself to the contemplative life as
the only way of life that is free. However, the superiority of contemplation over the
The activity is not of Christian origin; we find it in the political philosophy of Plato.
where the life of the polis is organized and directed by the philosopher whose aim is to make
possible its way of life. The Christian attitude of freeing oneself from worldly matters has
its origin in the apolitical philosophy of antiquity. (p 27)

The expression active life is closer to the Greek askholia (restlessness) than to the
Greek political bios. In Aristotle, the distinction between stillness and unrest is more
decisive that the difference between political life and theoretical life, because it can
to be found in each of the three forms of life. As the distinction between war and
peace: the war is fought for the love of peace, all activity must culminate in absolute
quietude. Until the beginning of the Modern Age, the expression active life did not lose its

negative connotation of 'inquietude', nec. otium, a-skholia. Contemplation is

superior to activity because no work of man can match in beauty and
truth to the physical order.

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 Traditionally, the active life takes its meaning from the contemplative life.
active and serves the needs and demands of contemplation in a living body.
For Saint Augustine, the contemplation of truth is a delight in the face of the burden that
supposes active life. (p 28).

Arendt argues that the 'enormous weight of contemplation in the hierarchy

traditionally erased the distinctions and articulations within active life and that,
Despite appearances, this condition has not undergone essential change due to the modern.
break with tradition and the inversion of its hierarchical order in Marx and Nietzsche.3
This modern investment shares with the traditional hierarchy the assumption that the
the same fundamental human concern must prevail in all activities of
men as a comprehensive principle for there to be order. Arendt employs the
active life expression presupposing different interests that support activities,
that are neither superior nor inferior to that of the contemplative life (p 29).

Thus, the author recovers the Greek depolis sense as a common space and therefore
so political, emphasizing the free action of citizens with and for others. The
It is characteristic of politics to start something new intersubjectively. And this beginning

The constant of human plurality implies the continuity of history.

3. Eternity and immortality

Active commitment versus pure thinking since the emergence of

political thought in the school of Socrates. According to the Greeks, the term
Immortality designates duration in time, life without death, granted to nature.
and to the gods of Olympus, opposed to mortal men; for them mortality
it is the mark of human existence and arises from the biological fact of following a line
a straight line in a universe that moves cyclically. The greatness of mortals lies in
his ability to work, act and speak that become everlasting in order
to survive through them thus demonstrating his immortality and divine nature
(Paul Ricoeur: “to live on in those who survive me”).

Theoriao "contemplation" designates the experience of the eternal. Lapolis, in

Such human creation cannot aspire to immortality. This, starting from the fall of the
Roman Empire accompanied by the growth of the Christian gospel that preached a

ARENDT, HANNAH, The Human Condition… Page 29.

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enduring life made useless and unnecessary an earthly immortal life. Turning
the active life and the political beings attendants of contemplation. Neither the secular of the
Modern Age neither the inversion of the traditional hierarchy between action and contemplation
it was enough to rescue from oblivion the struggle for immortality, source and center of life
active.

Chapter II: The public and the private sphere

4. The man as a social or political animal

Hannah Arendt rescues the experience of classical Greek democracy to

show us the contrasts that originally existed between the sphere of the market and the
sphere of politics as two basically distinct activities. Human plurality
has the ability to organize politically, and this opposes the life that each
individual in the interior of a home, of a family or of the market. This distinction
clearly separate the spaces where human beings move, on one side,
we have the public sphere, and, on the other hand, the private one. Thus, for the Greeks, the

Activities that took place in the market subjected the men who had to
taking care of their basic needs to be able to live; on the other hand, the realm of politics
it was a space where human beings could exercise their freedom.
They were socially organized in such a way that the division between the sphere
the public-policy and the private sphere was categorical. Only in the shared space at the level
familiar concerns about "what to eat" or "how to dress" become necessary for
to survive. Meanwhile, as we said, the public-political sphere was guided by the principle
of freedom and that it was only accessible to those men who did not need
worry about personal survival or that of their family. These "free" men
because they were not subjected to the needs of life or to the coercion of another man
it was the objective condition of freedom. To be political and to live in a polis meant that
everything was said through words and persuasion and not with force or violence.
To explain these areas or spheres, our author teaches us the notion of life.
actively showing us its rooting among men and the things made by them
within the world in which they were born. Human activity takes place due to the fact that the
men live together. But 'only action is the exclusive prerogative of man and only
this depends on the constant presence of others.4

4
ARENDT, Hannah, The Human Condition, translated by Ramón Gil Novales, Paidós, Barcelona, 1993, p. 38.
Original title: The Human Condition, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1958.