The Human Condition

Outline

The Human Condition (1958) examines the basic activities that make up an active human life: labour, work, and action. Hannah Arendt traces how modern society came to value production and consumption above political action and shared public life. Drawing on history and philosophy from ancient Greece to the modern age, the book asks what it means to live freely and meaningfully among other people.

• Arendt divides active human life into three basic activities: labour, work, and action.
• The book was published in 1958 and draws on history and philosophy from ancient Greece to the modern age.
• Modern society, Arendt argues, came to value production and consumption above political action and shared public life.
• Her central question is what it means to live freely and meaningfully among other people.

Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) was a German-born American political theorist and one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century. She fled Nazi Germany and later taught at universities including the New School in New York. Her works include The Origins of Totalitarianism, The Human Condition, and Eichmann in Jerusalem, where she introduced the phrase the banality of evil.