Hannah Arendt -- Labor, Work, Action -- Promise and Forgiveness
A quick review. Others such as Dr Chris Bateman do Arendt more justice.
Consider what this means to us in our communities. Labor (human as Animal Laborans) is what we do to survive; it never ends. It's the lowest level of Maslow, struggling to maintain homeostasis in a fallen, mortal world. In our society, we take labor for granted, and we go on.
Work (human as Homo Faber), however, is what we do to maintain our status quo, struggling to create, to create worlds, yet often mistaking consumerism for contentment. Labor we must do, no matter what lifestyle we choose -- even the monk and hermit must labor to maintain their lifestyle. Unfortunately, too many of us get lost in work, whether we be student, working class laborer, middle class stooge, We confuse labor with work and lose ourselves in materialism, entertainment -- bread and circuses -- and forget our humanity and its potential within a free society, or a society with the potential for freedom. Yet when we permit work to be our final goal, we are not far from losing ourselves in a totalitarian state.
Contrary to popular belief, the dictator is a person who prevents politics and preventing the development of power. Its orientation was towards the deeds and ideas that aspired toward the eternal remembrance, and hence Arendt make the surprising turn to explicitly tie action to concepts of promising and forgiving as the means to establish a degree of certainty in the supposedly unpredictable world where action is provided.
For Arendt, action (human as Zoon Politikon) is a public category, an end to itself, a worldly practice that is experienced in our intercourse with others, and so is a practice that “both presupposes and can be actualized only in a human polity.” Here, beyond labor and beyond work, we look to the other and ask what we can promise to strengthen our relationship -- with lover, with friend, with stranger. We make promises and we take action to keep those promises, thus strengthening not only the relationship, but the other, and thus ourselves. Communities are therefore born. But promises are sometimes broken. Sometimes the promise to care for property is forgotten or maliciously broken. The promise to care for and not harm another is broken. Thus forgiveness. We actively renew the old promises, forgiving and forgetting, permitting healing to take its course. Forgiveness as an action is the terrible sacrifice. It threatens our ego, our work, our labor. Yet forgiveness is fully required to maintain communities, relationships, and our most intimate selves. Without forgiveness, we are doomed.
To act is to begin:
Ah, I'm too far the idealist. Forgive me.
Reference
Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958. Print.
Be strong, and courageous.
Dixi et salvavi animam meam
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Action, the only activity that goes on directly between men…corresponds to the human condition of plurality, to the fact that men, not Man, live on the earth and inhabit the world. While all aspects of the human condition are somehow related to politics, this plurality is specifically the condition – not only the conditio sine qua non, but the conditio per quam – of all political life. (The Human Condition 7)Action: HA here defines action as the interaction between people "without the intermediary of things or matter" (7), which has some semblance to Habermas' public sphere and the ideal speech situation and inevitably comes with plurality. The principle of action is it requires freedom, in a political and economic sense, and produces political power.
Consider what this means to us in our communities. Labor (human as Animal Laborans) is what we do to survive; it never ends. It's the lowest level of Maslow, struggling to maintain homeostasis in a fallen, mortal world. In our society, we take labor for granted, and we go on.
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| British Library, "Livre des profits ruraux," 15th Century France |
Contrary to popular belief, the dictator is a person who prevents politics and preventing the development of power. Its orientation was towards the deeds and ideas that aspired toward the eternal remembrance, and hence Arendt make the surprising turn to explicitly tie action to concepts of promising and forgiving as the means to establish a degree of certainty in the supposedly unpredictable world where action is provided.
For Arendt, action (human as Zoon Politikon) is a public category, an end to itself, a worldly practice that is experienced in our intercourse with others, and so is a practice that “both presupposes and can be actualized only in a human polity.” Here, beyond labor and beyond work, we look to the other and ask what we can promise to strengthen our relationship -- with lover, with friend, with stranger. We make promises and we take action to keep those promises, thus strengthening not only the relationship, but the other, and thus ourselves. Communities are therefore born. But promises are sometimes broken. Sometimes the promise to care for property is forgotten or maliciously broken. The promise to care for and not harm another is broken. Thus forgiveness. We actively renew the old promises, forgiving and forgetting, permitting healing to take its course. Forgiveness as an action is the terrible sacrifice. It threatens our ego, our work, our labor. Yet forgiveness is fully required to maintain communities, relationships, and our most intimate selves. Without forgiveness, we are doomed.
To act is to begin:
To act, in its most general sense, means to take initiative, to begin (as the Greek word archein, 'to begin,' 'to lead,' and eventually 'to rule' indicates), to set something in motion. Because they are initium, newcomers and beginners by virtue of birth, men take initiative, are prompted into action.It's within us to act. It's part and parcel of our humanity. Action, then, is what we do as we seek freedom from the shackles of work and the mundane life labor. But freedom is impossible without others. It's the goal of all political (Greek: polis) life, and forgetting this -- forgetting promise and forgiveness -- leads us to to control by others because we voluntarily choose not to promise and we voluntarily choose not to forgive. Fear and anger canker our heart and minds and fester like the mental diseases they are.
Ah, I'm too far the idealist. Forgive me.
Reference
Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958. Print.
Be strong, and courageous.
Dixi et salvavi animam meam
Google +
Twitter @comstone
Professional Blog
