The Human Condition (2nd Edition)

The Human Condition (2nd Edition)
by Hannah Arendt

The Human Condition (2nd Edition)
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Book Summary Information

Author: Hannah Arendt
Introduction: Margaret Canovan
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1998-12-01
ISBN: 0226025985
Number of pages: 370
Publisher: University Of Chicago Press
Product features:
  • ISBN13: 9780226025988
  • Condition: New
  • Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!

Book Reviews of The Human Condition (2nd Edition)

Book Review: Great for Contemporary Philosophy courses in Phenomenology, Politics, and Ethics
Summary: 5 Stars

This book is extraordinarily accessible and thought-provoking for undergraduate students. I have used it in my course on twentieth-century women philosophers. Arendt, without citing Husserl or Heidegger, enacts what I would call a phenomenology of action. That is, she examines the experience of the vita activa (or life of action) by describing it on its own terms. For Arendt, Marx and Smith were wrong to say that human life is fundamentally about labor or about skilled work. Human life is not mostly for or about the consumption of commodities and entrenching one's family ties. Rather, human life is about establishing a public, political realm that emulates (but does not simply attempt to reproduce) the Greek polis. Humanity is about opening up a space for meaning and for evanescent but important co-creation of what counts as a good life.

For Arendt, action is fragile, frail, unpredictable, and irreversible. Action appreciates the differences between humans within the outlines of a nation, for example, and action does not simply attempt to compel others to yield to a single, sovereign will. Action calls those who participate in true politics to realize the sense of 'e pluribus unum' and to make sure that the plurality or 'pluribus' is not simply a fading memory in the face of the One.

To make her point, Arendt delves into Judeo-Christian scriptures, as well as the history of philosophy (Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Marx, and Nietzsche), attempting to reconcile a desire for shared power with a need for mutual forgiveness. Students respond well to the nexus of issues that Arendt raises, especially to the idea that 'radical evil' cannot be (but that most ordinary transgressions must be) forgiven.

Arendt helps students prepare for more texts in 20th Century philosophy, especially those by Edith Stein (On the Problem of Empathy), Simone de Beauvoir (Ethics of Ambiguity), and Maurice Merleau-Ponty (Phenomenology of Perception). Her discussion of action and intersubjectivity is essentially a dialogue with Husserl and Heidgger, and to me this should show her as not only discussing but also enacting respect and forgiveness (respectively).

Summary of The Human Condition (2nd Edition)

A work of striking originality bursting with unexpected insights, The Human Condition is in many respects more relevant now than when it first appeared in 1958. In her study of the state of modern humanity, Hannah Arendt considers humankind from the perspective of the actions of which it is capable. The problems Arendt identified then?diminishing human agency and political freedom, the paradox that as human powers increase through technological and humanistic inquiry, we are less equipped to control the consequences of our actions?continue to confront us today. This new edition, published to coincide with the fortieth anniversary of its original publication, contains an improved and expanded index and a new introduction by noted Arendt scholar Margaret Canovan which incisively analyzes the book's argument and examines its present relevance. A classic in political and social theory, The Human Condition is a work that has proved both timeless and perpetually timely.

Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) was one of the leading social theorists in the United States. Her Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy and Love and Saint Augustine are also published by the University of Chicago Press.

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