The human condition bookpedia

Hannah Arendt s 1958 The Human Condition was an impassioned philosophical reconsideration of the goals of being human In its arguments about the kind of lives we should lead and the political engagement we should strive for Arendt s interpretative skills come to the fore in a brilliant display of what high level interpretation can achieve for critical thinking Good interpretative thinkers are characterised by their ability to clarify meanings question accepted definitions and posit good clear definitions that allow their other critical thinking skills to take arguments deeper and further than most In many ways The Human Condition is all about definitions Arendt s aim is to lay out an argument for political engagement and active participation in society as the highest goals of human life and to this end she sets about defining a hierarchy of ways of living a vita activa or active life The book sets about distinguishing between our different activities under the categories of labor work and action each of which Arendt carefully redefines as a different level of active engagement with the world Following her clear and careful laying out of each word s meaning it becomes hard to deny her argument for the life of action as the highest human goal The Human Condition The Macat Library I stumbled onto this analysis thinking I had gotten hold of a digital copy of Hannah Arendt s Human Condition It was worth the hour if only to give myself a better understanding of the context of Arendt s work Now on to the source 98 I listened to this before reading the Human Condition I should have read Arendt s book first and it would have been meaningful Makes me want to read Arendt 98