The Human Condition

Topics
In 'The Human Condition', Hannah Arendt draws attention to human plurality as the driver of political history.
 
Such plurality, at first glance, might also be taken as the driver of economic development and innovation in so far as human-beings trade with each on the basis of their diverse interests. What one lacks the other might provide and vice-versa.

However, beyond this basic negotiation of trade-offs, Arendt points to a homogenising and universalising process in the modern market economy that seeks to render human-beings uniform as workers and consumers.

These tensions are explored relative to Arendt's distinctions between labour (bodily processes), work (production for the market & a wage, and consumption), and action (unmediated, political and expressive relations between individuals that lead to political mobilization).

The between of these distinctions offers fertile grounds for thinking about many aspects of work, the market, human action and whether economic reality is an empire of means, serves some overall end, or simply 'evolves' spontaneously through 'Lamarckian' processes of selection.

Comments