The Human Condition

Arendt's analysis of the vita activa, the active life, which she divides into three fundamental activities. Labour meets the biological needs of life and leaves nothing lasting behind. Work fabricates a durable world of objects. Action, together with speech, is how people appear to one another in public and begin something new; it depends on human plurality and on natality, the fact that each person is a new beginning. The book traces how the ancient distinction between private household and public realm was blurred by the rise of 'the social', and how modern societies have elevated labour above work and action. It discusses the unpredictability and irreversibility of action, with promising and forgiving as remedies, and closes with modern world alienation.

Its distinctions between labour, work and action offer a powerful way to think about automation, consumerism and what makes political life meaningful.