From The Human Condition, by Hannah Arendt:
I.
THE HUMAN
CONDITION
“…the wish to escape the human condition, I suspect, also
underlies the hope to extend man’s life-span far beyond the hundred-year
limit.” P. 2 (senescence, gerontology…)
II.
THE
PUBLIC AND THE PRIVATE REALM
“Whoever entered the political realm had first to be ready
to risk his life, and too great a love for life obstructed freedom, was a sure
sign of slavishness.” Footnote: “Thus,
Plato could believe he had demonstrated the natural slavishness of slaves by
the fact that they had not preferred death to enslavement.” P. 36
“…coincidence of the rise of society with the decline of
family…the absorption of family unit into corresponding social
groups…conformism is characteristic of the last stage of this modern development
…society expects from each of its members a certain kind of behavior, imposing
innumerable and various rules, all of which tend to ‘normalize’ its members, to
make them behave, to exclude spontaneous action or outstanding achievement.” P.
40
(Individualism) “…could survive only if the number of
citizens remained restricted. Large numbers of people, crowded together,
develop an almost irresistible inclination toward despotism…events will more
and more lose their significance, that is, their capacity to illuminate
historical time. Statistical uniformity
is by no means a harmless scientific ideal; it is the no longer secret
political ideal of a society which, entirely submerged in the routine everyday
living, is at peace with the scientific outlook inherent in its very
existence.” P.43
Footnote: “…economics can be a science only if one assumes
that one interest pervades society as a whole.” P. 44
“…annihilate the connection between public performance and
excellence.” P.49 (TikToks)
“…love can only become false and perverted when it is used
for political purposes such as the change or salvation of the world.” P. 52
“There is perhaps no clearer testimony to the loss of the
public realm in the modern age than the almost complete loss of authentic
concern with immortality, a loss somewhat overshadowed by the simultaneous loss
of the metaphysical concern with eternity.” P. 55
“Public admiration, too, is something to be used and
consumed, and status, as we would say today, fulfils one need as food fulfils
another: public admiration is consumed by individual vanity as food is consumed
by hunger.” P. 56
III.
LABOR
Footnote: “No work is sordid if it means greater
independence…” (Homer) “…his ideal is a gentleman-farmer, rather than a
laborer, who stays at home, keeps away from adventures of the sea as well as
public business on the agora, and
minds his own business.” (Hesiod) p. 83
“The slave’s degradation was a blow of fate and a fate worse
than death, because it carried with it a metamorphosis of man into something
akin to a tame animal.” Footnote: “It is
in this sense that Euripides calls all slaves ‘bad’: they see everything from
the viewpoint of the stomach.” P84
“…Adam Smith’s ‘menial servant’…to care for the upkeep of
the various gigantic bureaucratic machines whose processes consume their
services and devour their products as quickly and mercilessly as the biological
life process itself.” Footnote: “Obviously, Smith would not have had any
difficulty classifying our ‘white-collar jobs.’” P. 93
“For slaves are not instruments of making things or of
production, but of living, which constantly consumes their services.” Footnote:
(from) Aristotle Politics. P.122
“The industrial revolution has replaced workmanship with
labor, and the result has been that the things of the modern world have
become labor products whose natural fate is to be consumed, instead of work
products which are there to be used.” p. 124 (my underline)
Footnote: “…Corrado Gini…considers the United States to be a
‘laboring society’ where ‘labor is a pleasure and where all men want to labor.”
P 127
“…labor became an occupation of the free classes, ‘only to
bring them the obligations of the servile classes.’” (Wallon) p. 130
…”the total yearly
amount of individual free time enjoyed at present appears less an achievement
of modernity than a belated approximation to normality.” Footnote: “During the
Middle Ages, it is estimated that one hardly worked more than half of the days
of the year.” P. 132
“And what else, finally, is this ideal of modern society but
the age-old dream of the poor and destitute, which can have a charm of its own
so long as it is a dream, but turns into a fool’s paradise as soon as it is
realized.” P. 133
IV.
WORK
“There can be hardly anything more alien or even more
destructive to workmanship than teamwork, which actually is only a variety of
the division of labor and presupposes the ‘breakdown of operations into their
simple constituent motions.’” P. 161
“…the price of human labor rises to such an extent…it only
foreshadows something even more ‘valuable,’ namely, the smoother functioning of
the machine whose tremendous power of processing first standardizes and then
devaluates all things into consumer goods.” P.163
V.
ACTION
“…the lawmaker was like the builder of the city wall,
someone who had to do and finish his work before political activity could
begin.” (Trump’s border wall?) p. 194
“…interplay of powers with their checks and balances is even
liable to generate more power, so long, at least, as the interplay is alive and
has not resulted in a stalemate.” P. 201
“It is the obvious short-range advantages of tyranny, the
advantages of stability, security, and productivity, that one should beware…”
p. 222
Footnote: “Adam Smith, to whom the only legitimate function
of government is ‘the defence of the rich against the poor, or of those who
have some property against those who have none at all.’” P.220
Footnote: “…Augustine’s statement that the function of
government is to enable ‘the good’ to live more quietly among ‘the bad.’” P.229
“…men were no longer content to observe, to register, and
contemplate whatever nature was willing to yield in her own appearance, but
began to prescribe conditions and to provoke natural processes.” P.231
“Thus, the modern loss of respect, or rather the conviction
that respect is due only where we admire or esteem, constitutes a clear symptom
of the increasing depersonalization of public and social life.” P. 243
VI.
THE VITA ACTIVA AND THE MODERN AGE
“If everything has become doubtful, then doubting at least
is certain and real.” P.279
“…the physician…is held to have misunderstood his calling
when he prolongs life where he cannot restore health.” P.315 (see Plato)
“…no indications of the modern glorification of laboring in
the New Testament or in other pre-modern Christian writers.” P.316
“Vita contemplativa
simpliciter melior est quam vita active (‘the life of contemplation is
simply better than the life of action.)’” (see Aquinas)
“The only activity Jesus of Nazareth recommends in his
preachings is action, and the only human capacity he stresses is the capacity
‘to perform miracles’. P.318
“For what matters today is not the immortality of life, but
that life is the highest good.” P.319
Footnote: “…for subjectivity, where the artist feels called
upon to ‘express himself,’ his subjective feelings, is the mark of charlatans,
not of artists.” “Expressionist art, but not abstract art, is a contradiction
in terms.” P. 323
“But the action of the scientists…lacks the revelatory
character of action as well as the ability to produce stories and become
historical, which together form the very source from which meaningfulness
springs…”
“…it is in fact far easier to act under conditions of
tyranny that it is to think.” P. 324
“Numquam se plus agere
quam nihil cum ageret, numquam minus solum esse quam cum solus esset –
‘Never is he more active than when he does nothing, never is he less alone than
when he is by himself.” (see Cato). P. 325
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