Conditio humana

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As conditio humana (in classical Latin but condicio humana ) one generally designates the circumstances of being human and the nature of humans. It is the subject of philosophy , especially philosophical anthropology , as well as various sciences such as the social sciences or social psychology .

Sigmund Freud, for example, emphasized the unconscious in connection with the question of the human condition , and Erich Fromm made it the focus of his interest in knowledge .

Political action as a basic condition of human life

In 1958 Hannah Arendt asked in her book Vita activa ( The Human Condition ) about the basic parameters of human existence on this earth. The occasion is the first Sputnik mission into space in 1957 and the apparently imminent possibility of an extraterrestrial human existence. The book deals with the thesis of the self-alienation of humans from their nature through capitalist work and production processes (cf. Karl Marx , Pariser Manuskripte 1844). Arendt responds to Marx's criticism of modern society by placing not the activities of work and manufacturing, but the activity of acting at the center of her analyzes. She defines action as an activity that takes place exclusively among people and that does not depend on the use of things and reification . Action is the only activity in which a person can actually become what he is. Arendt therefore names action not only as a conditio sine qua non (necessary condition), but as a conditio per quam (sufficient condition) of human existence. Here it ties in with the Aristotelian understanding of man as a zoon politikon .

Arendt names life itself, the earth, natality and mortality , worldliness and plurality as further framework conditions for human existence . Her discovery of natality as a basic condition of human self-understanding has also found its way into more recent bioethical debates.

Criticism of the concept of the human condition

Some ( postmodern ) philosophers, however, reject the concept of the human condition or human nature as “ essentialist ” at all. Roland Barthes postulates the "mythological character" of the human condition , which is expressed in the fact that it fixes the unchangeability of the world through naturalization and essentialization :

"The myth of the human condition is based on a very old mystification, which has always consisted of placing nature at the bottom of history."

He explains this by way of example in his essay The Great Family of People on the exhibition The Family of Man , the title of which is already an original “zoological” classification “sentimentalized” and “moralized”.

literature

Footnotes

  1. ^ Hannah Arendt : The Human Condition. Chicago / London 1958, page 7, or Vita activa , p. 17
  2. ^ Hannah Arendt : The Human Condition. Chicago / London 1958, page 11
  3. ↑ Jürgen Habermas : The future of human nature. Frankfurt / M. 2001, pp. 101-104
  4. ↑ Roland Barthes : The great family of people. In: Roland Barthes: Myths of everyday life. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt / M. 1964, page 17
  5. ↑ Roland Barthes : The great family of people. In: Roland Barthes: Myths of everyday life. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt / M. 1964, page 16