Vita activa or From active life

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Vita activa or From active life is the main philosophical work of the political theorist Hannah Arendt . The lecture-based work was first published in the United States in 1958 under the title The Human Condition . The German version was published in 1960, translated by herself. Against the background of the history of political freedom and independent, active participation of citizens in public life in the USA, Arendt developed a theory of political action.

overview

Arendt's text is divided into six main chapters: The opening chapter Human conditioning is devoted to the development of its guiding concept, the Vita activa . The second chapter serves to differentiate between the “ space of the public ” and the “area of ​​the private”. In the following chapters three to five, under the headings of work , production and action , she puts central human production processes at the center of her analysis. In the final chapter, Vita activa and the modern age , she describes the decisive processes of change between European premodern and modern times and ends with her diagnosis of the “victory of the animal laborans”, according to which political action is limited by conformity and functionality.

The possibility of getting started as a prerequisite for an active political life

In contrast to Heidegger , Arendt bases her thinking on the birth of the individual and not on death. In Vita activa she elaborates on this idea of ​​“natality” (“ natality ”). With the birth the possibility to make a start begins. The individual has the task of actively influencing the common environment in cooperation with other individuals. She is concerned with the basic conditions of existence and persistence of human life, which she limits to three “basic activities”: “Working, producing and trading” (according to the ancient Greek terms ponos , poiesis and prāxis ). It characterizes the human “being” or human “nature” as independent and ultimately not describable, which cannot be defined terminologically or ontologically . "Attempts to determine the essence of man [end] mostly with some constructions of a divine."

"All three basic activities [...] are now anchored again in the most general conditionality of human life, namely that it comes into the world through birth and disappears from it again through death. As far as mortality is concerned, work ensures the survival of the individual and the survival of the species; the creation creates an artificial world which is to a certain extent independent of the mortality of those who inhabit it and thus counteracts its fleeting existence with something like continuity and duration; Finally, action, insofar as it serves to establish and maintain political communities, creates the conditions for a continuity of generations, for memory and thus for history. "

Acting is more closely tied to being a native than working and manufacturing. Everyone who is newly born into this world has the power to make a start again, i.e. to act actively and thus to change.

Work and manufacture

The work as the first component of the Vita activa “corresponds to the biological process of the human body”. It serves the continuation of the genus. Work therefore necessarily belongs to human life, but also to that of every other living being. According to Arendt, work is not linked to freedom , but rather represents a compulsion to maintain life, to which man is constantly subject from birth to death.

On the basis of the work that ensures his existence, man begins to think about the finitude of his existence. In order to escape from this certainty, he creates a world of things that he creates with " spirit " and "strength" from different materials and that will outlast his lifetime. The important thing here is that humans not only find themselves in an environment, like every animal does, but they build their own world. Arendt assumes that this world is constant. The individual manufactured things that make them up are so permanent that the individual can relate to them. For example, a strong form of such a relationship is the feeling of “coming home”. Without certain consistent qualities of “being at home”, a relationship cannot be established. In a constantly changing world, man cannot feel at home.

The distinction introduced by Arendt between work and manufacture also relates to production. As products of labor, she describes consumer goods that are “consumed” while products of manufacture or work are “used”.

Act

The third component represents the action that takes place “between” individuals and at the same time illustrates the uniqueness and plurality of human existence. Action in the ontological sense is a human ability option. Arendt argues that every individual can exist socially without ever having to work or produce anything themselves. Action, on the other hand, represents the core of human interaction and thus political existence, which for Arendt is a fundamental property of being human. Communication , d. H. “Finding the right word at the right moment” is always action. “Only violence is mute, and for this reason alone, sheer violence can never claim to be great.” The individual's awareness of being human can indeed be present without acting, but for other human agents this becomes non-acting The individual can never be perceived as a human being.

For Arendt, action is essentially linked to public space, without it it cannot be carried out or imagined. According to Arendt, this can be seen most clearly in the example of the ancient Greek polis , in which work, at least in its historical perspective, belongs to the private space of the household (“ Oikos ”), while the collective action of the individual full citizens of the polis played in public space on the market square (the agora ). For Arendt, the paradigmatic place of the vita activa appears in this epoch of European history, the political communication and interaction among citizens, who were all in possession of the same freedoms. Although Aristotle saw the highest fulfillment in the Vita contemplativa , thus in the philosophical search for wisdom, he nevertheless regarded man as essentially political ( zoon politikon ).

From the process of understanding in the political space to a mass society

In contrast, according to Arendt, there was a shift in the Middle Ages on the basis of Christian dogmatics. The highest freedom for man now lay in the God-oriented Vita contemplativa . The element of artisanal and artistic production was rated higher than ( philosophical ) thinking and (political) action. Man became homo faber , i.e. H. Creator of an artificial world. The “speechless amazement ”, which has been the “beginning and end of all philosophy ” since antiquity and was only accessible to a few, lost its importance in favor of the “contemplative gaze of the craftsmen”.

There was another shift in values in modern times . As the economy expanded into public space, the social importance of work came more and more to the fore and has become dominant in modern mass society . Humans became "animal laborans" (working animals). The aim is the highest possible increase in labor productivity and the conversion of all things into consumer goods. The concept of society now also tends to encompass the political area. The importance of the political, of action, has thus faded into the background.

Arendt criticizes the Christian-Occidental philosophy. Most of the philosophers had spoken out on political issues, but hardly any of them took part directly in the political discourse . The only exception she saw was Machiavelli . Even if the political found an appreciation in Hegel , Arendt turns primarily against Hegel's historical-philosophical conception of the necessity of historical development. The idea of the absolute as the goal of history leads to ideology and thus to the justification of undemocratic practices and finally to forms of total domination .

The modern individual also moves away from the political due to the “radical subjectivity of his emotional life,” the constantly changing “moods and whims” that entangle him in “endless inner conflicts”. The individuals are socially standardized . Deviations from this norm are recorded as antisocial or abnormal. The phenomenon of mass society arises with the rule of the bureaucracy . The social classes and groups are leveled out. All members of the community are controlled with equal power. The equalization, the conformism in the public leads to the fact that awards and "special features" become private affairs of individuals. Large groups of people develop a tendency towards despotism, either of an individual or of " despotism of the majority".

Even in Heidegger's conception of historicity as a basic condition of human existence, the thought of contemplation remains for the author. A vita activa, on the other hand, requires questions about the principles of politics and the conditions of freedom. Like Jaspers , Arendt saw Kant's moral philosophy as a starting point , in which the question of the conditions of human plurality was in the foreground. Kant not only looked at statesmen and philosophers, but also regarded all people as legislators and judges, and so came to the demand for a republic, which the researcher supports.

In this work, Arendt examines the historical change in terms such as freedom, equality, happiness, public, privacy, society and politics and describes the change in meaning in the respective historical context. Her point of reference is Attic democracy , especially at the time of the Socratic Dialogue . In her view, it is important to anchor the lost areas of the political again in a modified form in the present and thus to make fruitful the abilities of politically thinking and acting free individuals who try to distinguish themselves from one another. In contrast, she sees the widespread behaviorism , which aims to reduce people in all of their activities "to the level of an all-sidedly conditioned and behaving living being."

criticism

Her student Richard Sennett (2008) claims that Arendt makes the following distinction, which he considers to be “wrong because it dismantles the practically active person”: “While“ Animal laborans ”is fixed on the question of how,“ Homo faber ”asks according to the why. ”Sennett points out that the animal laborans can also think. This approach requires “a deeper understanding of the making of things, a more materialistic commitment than one finds in thinkers like Hannah Arendt.” According to Sennett, the “Animal laborans” [...] “Homo faber” can serve as a guide. "

The Marxist philosopher Helmut Seidel opposes the separation of work, manufacture and action at Arendt. According to Volker Caysa (2010), for Seidel “practice (i.e. the above-mentioned action) also means making through work”. Seidel assume a “concrete identity of work, manufacture and action”, which appears to be separated by its “ alienation in bourgeois-capitalist society”.

As an ethnologist, Gerd Spittler recognizes an unjustified devaluation of work compared to manufacturing. He writes that work is not as mindless as is assumed, and that it cannot be systematically separated from production. Work contains “creative, playful and aesthetic moments. [...] Rather, it demands and promotes diverse human abilities. "

expenditure

  • Hannah Arendt: Vita activa or From active life . Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1960 (English: The human condition .).
  • Hannah Arendt: Vita activa or From active life . Piper, Munich, Zurich 2002, ISBN 3-492-23623-5 . again: ibid. 2009
  • Hannah Arendt: The human condition . University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1998, ISBN 0-226-02598-5 .

literature

  • Wolfgang Heuer : Hannah Arendt. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1987, ISBN 3-499-50379-4 , pp. 52f., Pp. 92-101.
  • Marie Luise Knott : Comment on bilingualism. In: Wolfgang Heuer, Bernd Heiter, Stefanie Rosenmüller (eds.): Arendt manual. Life, work, effect. JB Metzler, Stuttgart Weimar 2011, ISBN 978-3-476-02255-4 , pp. 68f.
  • Ludger Lütkehaus : Natality. Philosophy of birth. The gray edition , Kusterdingen 2006, ISBN 978-3-90633-647-3
  • Anette Vowinckel: Arendt. Reclam, Leipzig 2006, ISBN 3-379-20303-3 , pp. 41-48.
  • Maike Weißpflug, Jürgen Förster: The Human Condtion / Vita activa or From active life. In: Wolfgang Heuer, Bernd Heiter, Stefanie Rosenmüller (eds.): Arendt manual. Life, work, effect. JB Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2011, ISBN 978-3-476-02255-4 , pp. 61-68.
  • Thomas Wild: Hannah Arendt. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2006, ISBN 3-518-18217-X , pp. 85-92.
  • Elisabeth Young-Bruehl : Hannah Arendt. Life, work and time. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2004, ISBN 3-596-16010-3 . Pp. 352-362, pp. 414-423, pp. 438-450 (American original 1982).

Footnotes

  1. ^ Vita activa or from active life (VA). Munich, Zurich -TB- 2002, p. 21.
  2. ↑ VA -TB- 2002, p. 17f.
  3. ↑ VA -TB- 2002, p. 36.
  4. ↑ VA -TB- 2002, p. 387f.
  5. ↑ VA -TB- 2002, p. 51ff.
  6. ↑ VA -TB- 2002, p. 55f.
  7. ^ Richard Sennett: Handwerk , Berlin 2008, p. 16.
  8. ^ Richard Sennett: Handwerk , Berlin 2008, p. 17.
  9. ^ Richard Sennett: Handwerk , Berlin 2008, p. 18.
  10. ↑ Volker Caysa: On the transformation of the spirit of the Leipzig Bloch period in the practice-philosophical debate around and before 1968 in the GDR , in: Klaus Kinner (ed.): Die Linke - Erbe und Tradition , Teil 1, Berlin 2010, p. 194.
  11. ↑ Gert Spittler: Anthropology of work. An ethnographic comparison. Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2016, p. 30, ISBN 978-3-658-10433-7