The Human Condition
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First published in 1958, The Human Condition is Hannah Arendt’s major work of political philosophy, an inquiry into the activities through which human beings inhabit and shape a shared world. Arendt distinguishes between labour, which sustains biological life; work, which builds the durable human-made world; and action, through which individuals reveal themselves to one another in speech and political participation. Drawing on ancient Greek thought while confronting the conditions of modernity, she considers what happens when economic necessity, technological progress and the rise of mass society threaten to eclipse the public realm.
At the heart of the book is Arendt’s conviction that freedom is not simply an inward state but something realised among people, through plurality, initiative and collective life. Her account of the ancient polis, the modern ascendancy of the social and the changing relationship between contemplation and action has profoundly influenced political theory, philosophy and the humanities. Both a reconsideration of the Western philosophical tradition and a searching reflection on modern existence, The Human Condition remains one of Arendt’s most enduring explorations of what it means to act, create and belong to a common world.
From the book
“With word and deed we insert ourselves into the human world, and this insertion is like a second birth.”
— Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition
On The Human Condition
“Arendt’s work is a sustained attempt to recover the meaning of political action and the public realm.”
— Margaret Canovan, Hannah Arendt: A Reinterpretation of Her Political Thought