Discussion Starter: Arendt's distintions between labor, work and activity

In The Human Condition, Arendt is primarily concerned with accounting for how “human activities” should be considered throughout history. She contrasts the active life with the contemplative life, and expresses particular concern with how the relationship and status of the two have changed throughout history in such a manner that prevents modern man from insight and contemplation. She argues that the ancient western philosophers viewed the contemplative like as superior and the active life (including labor, work, and action) as supplemental to the contemplative life. To them, the active life merely served the purpose of fulfilling needs and supporting the more important contemplative life.

Arendt also writes that the Marxian notion of labor reversed the traditional order of importance in regards to the active and contemplative lives. This restructuring the view of the order considers the active life the fundamental part of society and its functioning, while the contemplative life is merely an additional structure upon the foundation of the active life.

However, Arendt argues that neither should be considered superior to the other and that vita activa and vita contemplative are both distinct, but should be considered in tandem. Furthermore, she elaborates on vita active, dividing the active life into labor, work and action. Arendt defines labor as distinct from work, calling it human activity directed at meeting biological needs such as reproduction. Labor is endless because all needs cannot be fully satisfied at once. Thus, labor represents the cyclical human process which can carry a sense of futility and plays an important, driving and dividing role in human history.

Work is distinct from labor in that it has a clearly demarcated beginning and end and produces tangible results which become part of the world we live in. Work produces something durable rather than something intended for consumption. To Arendt, work involves an intrusion of the natural world in which workers must obtain raw materials in order to work. Thinking of humans as primarily workers renders a sort of utilitarian reasoning in which everything is a potential means to some further end. She argues that much of our conception of reason is derived from this consideration of work and that the notion of utility is substituted for the notion of worth. This substitution is marks the disappearance of the notion of intrinsic worth and greater value placed on value or use.

The third part of the vita activa is activity, which refers to the means by which people take initiative and express themselves to each other, either verbally or through actions. Freedom is the defining quality of activity, as it represents the human ability to begin, to take initiative and differentiate ourselves as unique.