Hannah Arendt -- Labor, Work, Action -- Promise and Forgiveness
A quick review. Others such as Dr Chris Bateman do Arendt more justice. 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 ...