First off, let me say that my reading in economics is confined to the Communist Manifesto, read my freshman year at HU. I am also not a classicist. This makes me a poor candidate to make substantive comment on tHC (heh). Nevertheless, the bizarre twists and turns that life constantly throws my way have put me in this position, so I will say to hell with it, and have a go.

Having only gone a hundred pages in, I cannot say where HA is going, or what she is trying to do, so I will take her word for it that she merely wants to have a good think as to what exactly we are doing here (“we” being humans as a collective, and “here” being on this earth). More specifically, she wants to think about how we got to where we are, and what is going to happen to us in light of the mind-bending scientific and technological advances of the last century, and those that are sure to come in the next.

It was hard not to guffaw when when she says that mankind will probably be liberated from labor in a few decades (pg. 4), but as it is still possible that we may see this change of condition in our own lifetimes, her basic point is still valid: what will we do in a laborless world when labor long ago became the meaning of our world? Much of the first part of the book explores the classical distinctions of human activity. The primary distinction is between labor and work (I cannot yet see why she bothered even to introduce the latter) and action. Labor and work, especially labor, are tied to animal necessity, while those who are of sufficient means can spend their time in action, an activity that can transpire only in the polis of the classical Greek city-state. Later philosophers, disillusioned with the city-state, lumped action in with the other lower two, and opposed these three to the contemplative life, thus conflating the three into one category: unquiet. Early Christian thinkers adopted this distinction enthusiastically, and thus transmitted it throughout Western history.

I’m tempted to go further, but this is already turning into a book report. Perhaps those that have read this text before me can spoil it a bit. What is Arendt going to do with this historical analysis? Does she feel we have lost something in this conflation of the three? Does she think this is something we can and should recover? Her comments on page 5 lead me to believe that she does.

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