Isocracy Network
Book Review: Hannah
Arendt, The Human Condition, University of Chicago Press, 1958
Hannah Arendt is considered one of the
most important political philosophers of the twentieth century and, it must be
stated, a profoundly influential contributor to the social and political theory
of the Isocracy network. Two of her major works include The Origins of
Totalitarianism, a sociological study of the Stalinist terror and Nazi
genocide, and On Revolution, which combined political science with
history, both highly important for an isocratic perspective. Arendt is
difficult to position in a traditional political sense; she is a supporter of
constitutionalism and the rule of law, yet she also disparaged representative
democracy in favour of high levels of deliberative participatory democracy and
the revolutionary spirit. Both anarchistic in her love of political pluralism,
political involvement, and direct democracy she also emphasised the fundamental
roles of government in establishing lasting institutions and laws as the free
agreements of behaviour between members of the polis.
The Human Condition, reviewed here in summary form,
emphasised the vita activa and distinguished between three fundamental
activity; labor, work and action, distinguishing the "human
condition" from "human nature", the latter existing within
human beings, the former between. The vita activa, or active
life, is necessarily distinguished by what has been more popular in the western
philosophical tradition which concentrated on vita contemplativa
(contemplative life). Famously Arendt refused to describe herself as a
philosopher precisely because of the historical attachment of that discipline
to contemplativa; Arendt (to use the Platonic philosophical language
which she targets) attended to the world temporary 'appearances', rather than
the world of eternal 'forms'. For her, life was to be lived with others in the
practical tasks of common activity i.e., praxis.
Labour is defined as the biological
process of the human body, and life-sustaining activities, noted for its
remorseless repetition. On the latter point a comparison is made with the
slaves of the Hellenic world; not because of the harshness of the work, but
rather because it was dedicated to the production of necessities, and those
which would be consumed with immediacy. Arendt refers to those who through
circumstance or even choice, are engaged only in labour as 'animal laborans',
as it is such a state that human beings are closest to the animal world. To be
trapped in the world of 'animal laborans' is to be barely human; it is not
living but mere survival, to paraphrase the attributed words of Chief Seattle.
This is, of course, a novel definition which constrasts strongly to theorist
such as Marx (for example) who combined labour, work, and activity into the
single category of "labour". Whereas Marx compared the labour in
relation to ownership of the means of production, Arendt is looking at the
activity itself. For it is quite possible for even a highly democratised
ownership to exist and for the population to be still engaged in labour, in
Arendt's sense. Further - and Arendt is particularly critical of Marx in this
regard - the assumption that the mechanisation of necessary consumables would
lead to a higher civilisation is fallacious without the opportunity for action.
As has become very evident, mechanisation has simple exapanded the appetite of
consumption; from necessities to luxuries.
In contrast the activity of work is
defined as the the interaction between the natural world and human artisanship,
involved in the creation of lasting things, the 'mixing of labour' to
paraphrase Locke, or 'homo faber', the production of things with an end, a
final good or service, in mind. All work involves violence against nature, as
part of the human transformation of the natural world. The distinction between
labour and work, as Arendt notes, can be found in most European languages;
e.g., 'arbeiten' and 'werken' in German; 'laborare' and 'fabricari' in Latin;
'ponein' and 'ergazesthai' in Greek, for example. It is the point where there
is labour transcends itself into permanence. But this process involves a
reifiction, to the conversion of an idea into a thing and instrumentalisation,
"a degredation of things into means" (p156), as evident in
utilitarian approaches, the exchange market, which itself is a new public world,
albeit one which is not part of political action. Applying a Marxist analysis,
it is at this point where alientation in the relations of production occurs.
Finally, action is defined as the
interaction between people "without the intermediary of things or
matter" (p7), which has some semblance to Habermas' public sphere and the
ideal speech situation and inevitably comes with plurality ("this
plurality is specifically the condition - not only the conditio sine qua non,
but the conditio per quam - of all political life" p7). The
principle of action is it required freedom, in a political and economic sense,
and produces political power; contrary to popular belief the dictator is a
person who prevents politics and preventing the development of power. Its
orientation was towards the deeds and ideas that aspired toward the eternal
remembrance, and hence Arendt make the seemingly surprising turn to explicitly
tie action to concepts of promising and forgiving as the means to establish a
degree of certainty in the supposedly unpredictable world where action is
provided.
Common to a lot of her works, Arendt
raises comparison of contemporary society with that of the Ancient Hellenic,
starting with distinguishing the despotism of the private life with the engagement
in the public polis. In modernity, especially through the politics of the
nation-state, a new realm arises "a curiously hybrid realm" called
'society', where private interests enter the public realm, but without an
orientation towards res publica, "the public thing", or public
interests. Indeed the public interest has become almost lost ("withered
away") with a bourgeois infatuation of household happiness, the 'freedom'
to be trivial and vacuous, but never excellent.
In concluding, Arendt considers the modern
age to be one of 'world alienation', where the pretense of the abolition of the
unhappy state of 'animal laborans' is in reality shifted to the third and
fourth world. The instrumentalisation of production has also become an
instrumentalisation of social relations, to the point that the only people
engaging in free action are the scientific community, with its multi-authored
papers and stringent peer review, whose tests are limited to facticity alone.
Whilst Arendt does not explicitly tie her
theory of the human condition to an explicit political economy, it is a
relatively painless task to do so. The principle of abolition of the
undignified status of animal laborans is achievable within its own context,
that is, what reduced human beings to animals of nature is the exclusion of the
equal right to the value of nature from human beings. Likewise the world of the
instrumental homo faber, to paraphrase Saint-Simon's famous dictum, must exist
only for the administration of things, and not the governance of people.
Essentially, free people must be 'ungoverned', and a sphere of life - the
public sphere - must exist for independent human action; the expression of
thoughts, ideas and the reaching of consensus, independent of coercive
influences.
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