Hannah Arendt clearly articulated a vision of political life free of religious origins as well as the dominance of religious authorities. Nonetheless, she both consistently drew upon religious ideas as well as encouraged religious actors to weigh in on political matters. To understand why, I firstly reiterate her account of intersubjective plurality articulated throughout the vita activa’s three categories of labor, work and action. Secondly, I apply the vita activa to some of Arendt’s most prominent writings (...) on religion. What emerges is yet another way in which Arendt’s oeuvre continues to matter. (shrink)

En este trabajo, procuramos analizar la cuestión de la vita activa y la vita contemplativa en la obra de Poggio Bracciolini, concentrándonos para ello, principalmente, en su diálogo Sobre la infelicidad de los príncipes. Nuestra hipótesis es que, en este texto, se contraponen, sin llegar a una tesis final, dos concepciones distintas de la felicidad. Por otra parte, esta ciceroniana y académica falta de una respuesta definitiva deja abierto, en el diálogo, un cuestionamiento general sobre el ser (...) humano y su cultura en aquellos años del Quattrocento italiano. In this article we attempt to consider the subject of vita activa and vita contemplativa in the work of Poggio Bracciolini, concentrating therefore mainly in his dialogue De infelicitate principum. Our hypothesis is that, in this text, there's a confrontation, without reaching a final thesis, between two different concepts of happiness. On the other hand, this academic and Ciceronian lack of a definitive response leaves open, in the dialogue, a general questioning about the human being and his culture in those years of the Italian Quattrocento. (shrink)

Los _Sermones _de Cromacio de Aquilea nos ofrecen evidencia directa de su experiencia episcopal y literaria, que se divide entre la exégesis más destacada y el objetivo pastoral. La simplicidad estructural y lingüística, y la referencia a algunos autores contemporáneos, características de la tercera de estas composiciones homiléticas, nos ofrecen la oportunidad para analizar los propósitos más íntimos y prácticos de este texto. De hecho, la estrecha relación con su audiencia y el intento de guiarla por el justo camino cristiano (...) son los evidentes protagonistas en todo el discurrir del sermón. Sin embargo, al mismo tiempo se observa también la exégesis escritural de Cromacio y su profundización doctrinal: el Obispo trata de ofrecer un pequeño pero útil bagaje para el camino de quien lo escucha, en una poderosa valorización de la acción humana. La _vita activa _que se suma a la _lex naturae _inherente al alma humana constituye, de hecho, el tema más evidente de la homilía íntegra, que expone el de Aquilea sobre todo con el objetivo de fortalecer la unidad y la identidad de quienes escuchan cuando enfrentan presiones externas. La referencia escritural es fuerte y está presente en todo el sermón: el pasaje, seguramente leído justo antes de la exposición, se expone casi en su totalidad a los fieles, para fijarlo mejor en la memoria de aquellos que asisten a la lectura. (shrink)

O problema do desenvolvimento continua sendo abordado à maneira tradicional na semiperiferia da economia mundializada, como um problema de atração de investimentos que agreguem trabalho à economia. Políticas de fomento à inovação científica e à tecnológica são raras, e não atentam para o fato de que, nos países de desenvolvimento original, esse processo coincidiu com amplas agendas de transformação social e cultural associadas à ideia da modernidade. No entanto, a autonomia do campo político, central para a ideia da Modernidade, vem (...) sendo comprometida por interesses definidos no campo econômico, o que agrava as condições dos países semiperiféricos. Este artigo propõe uma reflexão sobre os limites do desenvolvimento na economia globalizada, através de uma síntese entre as abordagens filosófica, sociológica e econômica da questão. Palavras-chave: Modernidade. Globalização. Desenvolvimento. Vita activa. (shrink)

Zusammenfassung In der Philosophie Platons und der ihm folgenden Tradition bilden Theorie und Praxis stets eine Einheit, wobei die Theorie der Praxis in folgender Hinsicht übergeordnet wird: Die Theorie, verstanden als Schau (θεωρία/theôria) der „Idee des Guten“, fundiert die Praxis gelingenden Lebens und konkreter Handlungen. Bei Meister Eckhart scheint sich dieses Verhältnis zu komplizieren. Ausgangspunkt ist die Beobachtung, dass in seinen Werken eine Aufwertung der sog. vita activa, der tatkräftig-anpackenden Lebensform, beobachtet werden kann: Diese Lebenspraxis sei sogar, so (...) lautet die wirkmächtige Interpretation Dietmar Mieths, die Spitze des Menschenmöglichen und gegenüber der vita contemplativa vorzuziehen. Wie verträgt sich aber diese These mit dem oft kolportierten Vorrang der Theorie gegenüber der Praxis? In der vorliegenden Arbeit soll das Verhältnis von Kontemplation und Theorie einerseits zur vita activa andererseits geklärt werden. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to formulate several observations on the psychological relations between vita contemplativa and vita activa which manifest in the context of the two following problems: what basic psychological mechanisms may propel an agent to forsake one type of life for the sake of another; and what effect an agent’s deep involvement in VC may have for his attitude towards VA as well as for his manner of pursuing VA. In the paper, the (...) distinction is made between VC in the strong sense and VC in the weak sense, and it is argued, among others, that the two features of VC in the strong sense—selflessness and otherworldliness—make VC a desirable complement of VA : the involvement in the public sphere motivated by VA is likely to be not only more effective, but also more durable than the involvement propelled by disappointment with the private VA. Therefore, human beings should not be thought of as divided into two rarely interpermeating categories namely those who are ‘psychologically destined’ for VC and those who are ‘psychologically destined’ for VA. Rather, the opposite seems to be true, namely that there exist strong motivational links in the direction from VC to VA. (shrink)

The objective of this work is to analyze the relation between active life, nobility and liberty in Thomas More s Utopia. In Quentin Skinners interpretation, Moro argues that the true nobility should not be understood as abundance of wealth, but as willingness to provide good services for the commonwealth. In first place, this paper will show some classical interpretations in favor and against of active and contemplative life. Second, it will contrast the propositions of two strands of Humanism found in (...) The Utopia; one closer to Plato and Greek philosophy, the other inspired in Roman civic philosophy. Third, I will show the relation between active life and nobilitas in Mores Utopia. Finally, I will try to link these concepts with the notion of liberty developed by Skinner and More. O objetivo deste trabalho é re-analisar, a partir da interpretação de Quentin Skinner, a relação entre vida ativa, nobreza e liberdade em A Utopia de Tomás Moro. Para o pensante inglês, o conceito de nobilitas de Moro não se entende como a abundância de riquezas, mas como a disposição a sacrificar-se pelo bem comum. Em primeiro lugar, se mostrarão diversas interpretações a favor e contra da vida contemplativa e a vida ativa na tradição política clássica. Em segundo lugar, se mostrará como são contrastadas duas correntes humanistas dentro do contexto de A Utopia; uma de tendencia platónica e outra relacionada com o humanismo cívico de inspiração romana. Terceiro, se tratará de mostrar o vínculo entre vida ativa e nobilitas em A Utopia de Moro. Por último, se buscará a relação entre esta noção de nobreza com a concepção de liberdade que propõem Skinner e Moro. El objetivo de este trabajo es reanalizar, a partir de la interpretación de Quentin Skinner, la relación entre vida activa, nobleza y libertad en La Utopía de Tomás Moro. Para el pensador inglés, el concepto de nobilitas de Moro no se entiende como la abundancia de riquezas, sino como la disposición a sacrificarse por el bien común. En primer lugar, se mostrarán diversas interpretaciones a favor y en contra de la vida contemplativa y la vida activa en la tradición política clásica. En segundo lugar, se verá como son contrastadas dos corrientes del humanismo dentro del contexto de La Utopía. Una de corte platónico y otra relacionada con el humanismo cívico de inspiración romana. Tercero, se tratará de mostrar el vínculo entre vida activa y nobilitas. Por último, se buscará la relación entre esta noción de nobleza con la concepción de libertad que proponen Skinner y Moro. (shrink)

The paper introduces the concept of “spaces of meaning,” distilled from the work of political theorist Hannah Arendt, and used as an interpretative tool to understand some central theoretical moves in the The Human Condition. By focusing on activities which actualise conditional structures and which thereby generate experiences and meaning, I present a phenomenological re-interpretation of Arendt’s three basic activities of labour, work, and action, which actualise the conditions of life, worldliness, and plurality. The term “spaces of meaning” indicates how (...) the unfolding of certain activities simultaneously creates and structures spaces and meaningful orientation which involves a certain temporality, spatiality, corporeality, and intersubjectivity. I differentiate between activity-based and visibility-based spaces of meaning and present a dynamic interpretation of their interplay. In doing so, I challenge Seyla Benhabib’s view that part of Arendt’s methodology contains what Benhabib calls “phenomenological essentialism.” Furthermore, this analysis aims at developing an analytical tool and flexible framework also beyond Arendt scholarship. Phenomenologists can use this model of “spaces of meaning” for the task of reclaiming experience as world-building and world-opening, also in a normative sense, and of demonstrating how structures and orders are lived while they condition and form spaces of meaning. If we want to understand, criticise, act, or change something, this subjective and intersubjective perspective will remain indispensable. (shrink)

In this paper I examine three historically significant readings of the epochal transition from the Middle Ages to the modern world: that provided by Alexandre Koyré in From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe , that of Hans Blumenberg in The Legitimacy of the Modern Age and that of Hannah Arendt in The Human Condition . Each of these readings isolates crucial aspects of the epochal transition which contribute to an understanding of the loss or transformation of traditional measures (...) for knowing and doing consequent upon the shift from the contemplative to the active life. Blumenberg provides a philosophical explanation for the cosmological shift which Koyré describes, while Arendt thematizes the dangers inherent in the loss of an ethical measure which accompanies this transition. Yet both Blumenberg and Arendt conclude that the search for a world-immanent epistemological measure, which would allow us to gauge the adequacy of our descriptions of the world, is not simply a problem for the modern philosopher to address, but rather an impossibility already abandoned in the transition to the modern age. I argue that, on the contrary, such a measure is a requisite of the modern scientific enterprise. (shrink)

En este trabajo presentamos la traducción del latín al español de la carta de Giovanni Pico della Mirandola a su amigo Andrea Corneo de Urbino con introducción y notas. En el texto, Pico expone sus puntos de vista respecto una de las cuestiones que tuvo en vilo a los intelectuales del siglo XV: la de la elección entre la vida activa y la contemplativa. La carta trata, además, del llamado "incidente de Arezzo", un confuso episodio en el que el (...) joven conde raptó a la esposa de Giuliano Mariotto de' Medici. A lo largo del texto Pico se revela como imitador de los autores clásicos latinos, entre ellos, Séneca, Horacio, Gelio, Plauto, Terencio y especialmente Cicerón. In this paper, we offer the translation from latin to spanish of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola's letter to his friend Andrea Corneo from Urbino with introduction and notes. In this text, Pico presents his points of view about one of the most important problems along the fifteenth century: the choice between active and contemplative life. In addition, the letter enter upon the so-called "incident of Arezzo", a confusing episode in which the young count kidnapped Giuliano Mariotto de' Medici's wife. Along the text, Pico reveals himself as classical latin authors's imitator, among others, Seneca, Horace, Gellius, Plautus, Terence and specially Cicero. (shrink)

En este trabajo presentamos la traducción del latín al español de la carta de Giovanni Pico della Mirandola a su amigo Andrea Corneo de Urbino con introducción y notas. En el texto, Pico expone sus puntos de vista respecto una de las cuestiones que tuvo en vilo a los intelectuales del siglo XV: la de la elección entre la vida activa y la contemplativa. La carta trata, además, del llamado "incidente de Arezzo", un confuso episodio en el que el (...) joven conde raptó a la esposa de Giuliano Mariotto de' Medici. A lo largo del texto Pico se revela como imitador de los autores clásicos latinos, entre ellos, Séneca, Horacio, Gelio, Plauto, Terencio y especialmente Cicerón. In this paper, we offer the translation from latin to spanish of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola's letter to his friend Andrea Corneo from Urbino with introduction and notes. In this text, Pico presents his points of view about one of the most important problems along the fifteenth century: the choice between active and contemplative life. In addition, the letter enter upon the so-called "incident of Arezzo", a confusing episode in which the young count kidnapped Giuliano Mariotto de' Medici's wife. Along the text, Pico reveals himself as classical latin authors's imitator, among others, Seneca, Horace, Gellius, Plautus, Terence and specially Cicero. (shrink)

Hannah Arendt famously argued that acts of violence are corrosive to a free and plural politics. However, the broader implications of her critique of violence are less well known. Reading her concept of violence comprehensively, with regard to (ostensibly non-political) labor and work as well as action, this article reveals its broader relevance for contemporary political thought: the political question of violence lies at the heart of our ecological crisis and is crucial for the social structure of labor domination. While (...) Arendtian politics is without normative guarantees, the conceptual distinction between instrumental violence and free politics is crucial, because it renders the political judgment of violence possible. In every realm of human activity, the refusal to acknowledge violence stunts our capacity to care for the world. (shrink)

Recent reform initiatives calling for ‘civic’ professionalism can be seen as a response to the widely reported decline in public trust in the professions and an attempt to partially remedy this problem through a more publically engaged professionalism. The author draws on the political philosophy of Hannah Arendt, identifying the strong, albeit in the professionalism literature rarely acknowledged, affinities between civic professionalism and her concept of action as freedom through public deliberation. Using the three modalities of the active life that (...) Arendt discusses in The Human Condition as analytical tools, the author suggests that changing conditions in the public sector have led to professional life increasingly taking on the forms of labour and work, at the expense of action. The implications of these developments are highlighted before the author proceeds to show that a professional life oriented strongly towards action is consistent with ‘civic’ professionalism based on community engagement. Some of the main approaches traditionally taken to promote a civic orientation among university students are noted; the article concludes with a discussion of how the specific concepts underlying Arendtian action can be put to work in university pedagogies to intentionally promote the public ‘civic-minded professional’. (shrink)

Maximus the Confessor distinguishes three stages in the spiritual becoming of man: vita passibilis i.e. the way of life in that man is living under the reign of the bodily passions, apatheia as state of liberation from the reign of the lower passions, and vita passiva as modus vivendi in which the human makes the personal experience of the revelation and the presence of God. Thereby being man means according to Maximus suffering under the rule of someone - (...) divine or demonic - or something. The human condition is especially passive. Even contemplation (theōria) becomes in this approach a kind of passion: the passive experience of the presence of God. Although there is an old tradition in the classical Greek culture concerning the equivalency mathein-pathein (from Aeschylus to Aristotle and until Neo-Platonist thinkers like Proclus) which is received in the Christian tradition first of all by Denys the Areopagite, Maximus the Confessor is one of the first Christian theologians who tries to reconstruct the classical conception concerning the typology of the human ways of life (vita activa-vita contemplativa) as being based on passion: passion of lower impulses, passion of the demonic temptations and sins, but also passion of the overwhelming divine presence. Man can only lead a passionate life as slave of the lower passions (pathēmata) and as such of the devil or as slave of God in the Holy Spirit. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Holly Flora’s published dissertation is a critical contribution to scholarship of the origins of the Meditationes Vitae Christi, a text strongly associated with the preaching and prayer habits of the early Franciscan order and perhaps the most representative example of the late-Medieval devotional and pictorial phenomenon often summarized as the “Vita Christi tradition.” For almost a century, art historians have invoked the MVC to explain iconographic innovations in (...) late-Medieval and Renaissance art, in particular the emergence of apocryphal images of the early life of Christ. In contrast to these earlier art-historical uses of this text, Flora advocates for a re-contextualization of the MVC. She joins scholars, in particular Isa Ragusa, who suggest that the didactic content and devotional strategies of the MVC reflect a particularly Franciscan strain of the Vita Christi, one aligned with the cura monialium , and argues that it was probably composed by a Franciscan friar for the spiritual benefit of a Poor Clare. The MVC’s distinctive emphasis on themes of virginity, silence, and enclosure support this interpretation, as do a series of interjected prompts or imperatives for the reader to visualize herself participating in poignant events that underscore the humanity of Christ and promote affective devotion. Flora sees the MVC as an attempt by a friar to reconcile the competing Franciscan notions of the vita activa and vita contemplativa in the interests of a cloistered nun under his care; the performative devotional strategies offered by the MVC would have afforded her the means to engage actively—even if only virtually—in a life of extreme poverty or to engage in charitable public giving as exemplified by the lives of Christ and the Virgin, opportunities Flora suggests were not readily available to a cloistered nun.Association of the MVC with the Poor Clares is bolstered by the manuscript that probably contains the closest witness to the original version of this text . The author’s compelling consideration of the textual, material, and pictorial content of Ms. ital. 115 supports the claim that it was made in Pisa around 1340–50 for the community of Poor Clares at the convent of San Martino. Although written on paper rather than parchment and painted in a humble watercolor technique, Ms. ital. 115 contains the lengthiest extant pictorial cycle of any version of the MVC, a characteristic that agrees with the image-centric devotional practices of medieval nuns. Flora’s comparison of those few MVC manuscripts that contain pictorial cycles of comparable length casts into relief those discrete iconographic characteristics of the Ms. ital. 115 cycle. Most telling are ubiquitous images of women that resemble Poor Clares, regular sewing companions of the Virgin, whose presence indicates the illuminators’ attentions to the interests and identities of their audience.Having established Ms. ital. 115’s Clarissan context, the remainder of the Devout Belief of the Imagination is a consideration of a Poor Clare’s interaction with the manuscript. Flora describes this experience as an intensely emotional didactic process that begins with instruction and culminates in imaginative devotional performances where Mary constitutes the main paradigm for female monastic conduct. The extensive account of the Virgin’s childhood in the Temple, for example, supplies a progressive lesson for a young nun on the virtues of discipline and devotion. The culmination of this spiritual maturation process is the extraordinary text-image structure of the Circumcision of the Christ child by his Mother. Not only does this event resonate with Franciscan typology, but as Flora demonstrates, Mary’s privileged position in sharing the suffering of Christ offers a powerful introduction to the affective devotional strategy that structures the viewer’s experience of the remainder of the manuscript. Extended pictorial sequences that follow metaphorically address the cloistered condition of a Poor Clare viewer and her particular spiritual needs. The Holy Family’s Flight into Egypt and their.. (shrink)

En este texto comento el libro Hannah Arendt: libertad política y totalitarismo, de Fina Birulés. El libro presenta el pensamiento de Hannah Arendt en términos de una actividad imbricada en la praxis y en la experiencia. En este sentido, Birulés destaca dos elementos que marcaron la trayectoria intelectual de Arendt, el choque con la realidad del totalitarismo y el choque intelectual con sus maestros Karl Kaspers y Martin Heidegger. El acontecimiento político del totalitarismo lleva a la autora alemana y judía (...) a admitir que es necesaria una nueva comprensión de la política desvinculada de la filosofía política universalista y abstracta. Ésta es expresada por el término cristalización, en sintonía con Walter Benjamin. La vita activa requiere de un pensar autónomo, en el que es central la categoría de natalidad. (shrink)

H. Arendt developed largely her hermeneutical interpretation of understanding in line with the rethinking of I. Kant’s philosophical heritage. Although she was able to offer a rather original interpretation of the theoretical views of the great German philosopher, her hermeneutic strategy was also influenced by the approaches to their understanding that were proposed by her teachers M. Heidegger and K. Jaspers. Arendt’s hermeneutical teaching proceeds from the need to realize the close unity of practical action and spiritual activity of the (...) human subject - Vita Activa and Vita Contemplativa. Accepting the initial position of Heidegger’s metaphysics of finiteness about the “abandonment” of man in the flow of time, Arendt simultaneously follows Jaspers’ call for the need for an existential-hermeneutic interpretation of practical action and the abilities of the spirit by their understanding on the basis of Kant’s legacy. Singling out thinking, will and judgement among the main vectors of self-realization of the spirit, she demonstrates their close relationship with the main types of practical human activity - work, work and action. Analyzing the abilities of the spirit, Arendt emphasizes the major role of thinking, which brings together the processes of knowledge acquisition and meaning creation. It highlights the primacy of the meaning-producing function of the reason in relation to the ability of the intellect to generate true knowledge on the basis of generalization of the data of contemplation. Describing thinking after Kant as a “thing in itself”, Arendt speaks of its involvement in eternity and time in the moment of the present, the ability to generalize the past and design the future. Thinking forms the core of practical reason, which Kant identified with the will, and opens a new horizon of meaning generation in its aspiration to the future. The ability to judge also turns out to be a product of thinking, referring to the past while relying on common sense and imagination. Arendt rightly argues that the “paralysis” of the faculty of judgement, indicating the significance of Kant’s categorical imperative, threatens not only to produce a distorted vision of history, but also the triumph of the “banality of evil” in the sphere of politics. (shrink)

Dieser Aufsatz, der sich den Interpretationen u. a. von Robert Bernasconi, Jacques Taminiaux und Franco Volpi anschließt, betrachtet Heideggers „Wiederholung“ der praktischen Philosophie des Aristoteles als eine Radikalisierung des aristotelischen Begriffs des Handelns (praxis). Die moderne „Not des Wohnens“ erweist sich als ein Ergebnis der Unterordnung der Endlichkeit und Zeitlichkeit des menschlichen Handelns in der abendländischen philosophischen Tradition unter die metaphysischen und theologischen Ideale, die aus dem anfänglichen Verständnis der Seiendheit als beständiger Anwesenheit (ousia) hervorgehen. Die Grundform dieser Unterordnung ist (...) die aristotelische Auslegung der reinen praxis als eine „übermenschlich“ selbstgenügsame Betrachtung ohne äußere Zwecke. Die Behandlung der praktischen „Besinnung“ (phronesis) in der Nikomachischen Ethik bietet jedoch eine Einsicht in die endliche und situationsbedingte Verfassung der eigentlich menschlichen Selbstverwirklichung. Die Lektüre der Nikomachischen Ethik in Heideggers Marburger Vorlesung über Platons Sophistes kann als der Ausgangspunkt für die Geschichte des tätigen Lebens in Hannah Arendts Vita activa angesehen werden. Gleichwohl gliedert Arendt die geschichtliche Entwicklung der praxis ausdrücklicher als Heidegger auf und bedenkt auch, was bei Heidegger weitgehend ungedacht bleibt: den politischen Charakter der ursprünglichen praxis und das apolitische Wesen der Philosophie. (shrink)

This is a comparative study on the 20th's century's Western philosophy Hannah Arendt(1906-1975) and the 16th century's Eastern Confucian thinker Wang Yang-ming(1472-1529). Wang-ming was a Neoconfucian thinker of the 16th century China. In his time, Chinese intellectual world was dominated by Neoconfucian Ch’eng-Chu School which laid much stress on scholastic work of learning. Yang-ming saw a huge obstacle of intellectualism in Ch’eng-Chu school’s theoretical scholasticism that emphasized overly book-learning to be required on the way to become a genuine person. He (...) recognized this kind of rigidintellectualism as the true reason for the dichotomy in his time between knowledge and action, between learning and life, and between selfcultivation and social practice. According to his view, the dichotomy brought about serious political corruption and oppressed human creativity up to the point of total institutionalization of “truth”. Hannah Arendtwas sickened under the severe totalitarianism of the 20th century, especially as a Jew under the German Nazism. She undertook an extensive analysis of how Western civilization generated totalitarian imperialism, fascism, and communism, going through the modern times, all of which made human beings’ language and action superfluous, erupted, and destroyed. Through these experiences, she became disgusted with traditional Western hierarchy of thinking and doing, philosophy and politics, theory and practice, in short, vita contemplativa and vita activa. Although they both lived far away from each other in space and time and used completely different languages, they both, in my view, shared many common problems and concerns, not only in the contents of their thoughts but also in the way and form of construction of thoughts. To the similar extent that people were warned and judged by both thinkers respectively in their times of the totalitarianism of making human beings superfluous and puppet-like, we human beings in the 21st century are considered to be threatened by the totalitarian nullification caused by modern utilitarianism, automation, consumerism, etc. These principles are practiced limitlessly and boundlessly, so that our whole lives of politics, culture, and education are now suffering from that threat. It is my conviction that we can acquire some guide and wisdom from the twothinkers of East and West, because they discovered possible solutions of how to restore and revive human beings’ capacities of thinking and judging, and how to bring action and doing. (shrink)

I try to show that Aristotle does not restrict 'praxis' to those activities which have their end in themselves. NE VI 5, 1140b6-7 need not to be taken as an argument in favour of the restricted interpretation: the wording of the passage is compatible with the interpretation that the end of a praxis is (another) praxis (e.g. eupraxia), the end of a poiesis on the other hand is never a poiesis. This interpretation fits better the use of 'praxis' throughout the (...) NE. MM A 34, 1197a4-12 is discarded since the MM is not written by Aristotle. Next I discuss the relation between the verbs 'prattein' and 'poiein' on the one hand and the corresponding nouns 'poiesis' and 'praxis' on the other, in order to determine their exact meaning. To conclude, Aristotle's distinctions are compared to certain tenets of H. Arendt in her 'Vita Activa'. (shrink)

"The last third of the twentieth century," Gerard Hauser writes, was marked by "a flurry of intellectual work aimed at theorizing rhetoric in new terms" (2001, 1). The year 1958 was key in this flurry, with five major works appearing on a rhetorically inflected philosophy and theory of argumentation: Hannah Arendt's The Human Condition (on the relationship between the vita contemplativa and vita activa); Michael Polanyi's Personal Knowledge (on the role of tacit knowledge, emotion, and commitment in (...) science); Stephen Toulmin's Uses of Argument (on the use of argument in nonformal contexts); Walter Ong's Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue: From the Art of Discourse to the Art of Reason (on the history of the .. (shrink)

In place of traditional approaches in environmental ethics, I suggest an improved approach, with respect to the goal of improving the condition of the natural environment, called 'world mediation' through the use of Hannah Arendt's theory of the vita activa . This approach focuses on the relationship between human made worlds and nature, from which a theory of value is suggested. Intrinsic value theory and nature-culture monism are both criticized for an insufficient attention paid toward the human-nature relationship.

This chapter explores the ways in which the project of the early Royal Society supported the transformation of religion into a practical and reasonable activity that essentially consists in a kind of natural religion wherein we focus on what can be known about God and our duties through the natural light, understood in terms of an experimental approach to nature. More precisely, Rossiter argues that the natural religion supported by figures in and around the Royal Society subverts the traditional hierarchy (...) between contemplation and action found in the medieval period by subsuming contemplation into action—the fruit of which is a concept of religion that is above all practical. After the Introduction, the second section considers the way in which the ideal of religious contemplation is viewed differently between the Royal Society and earlier medieval perspectives that value speculative theology. He argues that figures in the Royal Society invert the traditional hierarchy found in the medieval period between the vita activa and the vita contemplativa. Instead of seeing action as dispositive and subservient to contemplation, experimental philosophers understand contemplation as an ultimately practical activity oriented toward bettering our condition on this Earth. In the third section, Rossiter shows that the proper contemplation of nature on this view yields evidence of teleological design. Contemplation of nature, then, ultimately has a practical orientation insofar as recognition of divine design in nature is intended to strengthen the conviction that God too has designed human nature for practical ends. In the fourth section, he argues that this serves to yield a ‘de-confessionalised’ conception of religion in which religious knowledge primarily consists in a minimal set of propositions about the world and the divine nature, all of which were verified by experience and oriented toward promoting ethical behaviour. Religion, in this sense, is essentially practical and has no place for contemplation as an end in itself. (shrink)

Religion after Deliberative Democracy responds to gaps exposed by the case of religion in deliberative democratic theory. Religion's persistent visibility in political life has called for new solutions for healing deeply divided societies. In response, the author begins with Jeffrey Stout’s pragmatist vision of democracy before providing a series of supplements in subsequent chapters. Past legacies are refigured in a rapprochement with Jürgen Habermas’s work which is differentiated from the distinctive relevance of Hannah Arendt’s vita activa. New developments (...) in comparative political theology are complemented by recent systems theory approaches to institutional interactions. Peaceful protest movements are reframed in light of the trust-building capacities of minipublics. The result is reason for renewed confidence in democratic practices attuned to fostering political plurality and capable of responding to persistent religious partisanship. This book fills a crucial space in the literature on religion and democracy and will be of interest to students and scholars of philosophy of religion, theology, pragmatism, and political theory. (shrink)

Retomando la lectura de Hannah Arendt en La condición humana sobre la vita activa y, particularmente, sobre la "acción" como condición de posibilidad de la "vida política", este trabajo busca poner en entredicho la relación entre "política", "vida" y "acción". Para ello, centraremos este análisis en el pensamiento de Filón de Alejandría; más especialmente, en un rara avis dentro de su corpus: La vida contemplativa o de los suplicantes. El objetivo de la ponencia es reflexionar sobre el lugar (...) donde se instala la reflexión filosófica y la reflexión teológica como forma política y qué implicaciones tiene esto: qué ocurre cuando el fundamento de la enseñanza no pasa por la vita activa arendtiana sino por una vida pasiva bajo la consagración a la tarea de la reflexión y el estudio, ¿podríamos plantear desde allí una forma comunitaria que constituya la política como in-acción? (shrink)

Open science hardware (OSH) are prototypes of laboratory instruments that use open source hardware to extend the purely epistemic (improving knowledge about nature) and normative (improving society) ideals of science and emphasize the importance of technology. They remind us of Zilsel’s 1942 thesis about the artisanal origins of science and instrument making that bridged disciplinary and social barriers in the 16th century. The emphasis on making, tinkering, and design transcends research, reproducibility, and corroboration in science and pushes to the forefront (...) educational, emancipatory, and aesthetic and exploratory uses. I will use two recent projects, OpenDrop electrowetting platform and Open Source Estrogen that make but also reflect OSH’s playful, expressive, and performative strategies and define the present practices as “artisanal science.” These hybrid and ambiguous practices bridge divides between present disciplines and skills but they also define science as an everyday activity directly connected to the private and public interests of the citizens. To describe this epistemic and normative ambiguity of artisanal science, I employ Hannah Arendt’s 1958 critique of homo laborans and homo faber and claim that science artisans (citizen scientists, geeks, makers, and hackers) offer an alternative to professionalization of science as practiced in the university and R&D laboratories. Science artisans design and build instruments to engage in civic “vita activa” over instruments but also leisurely “otium” outside of the work and science labor. OSH in this sense empowers individuals and communities to explore new connections between scientific practices, public actions, and private interests (leisure). The science artisans strive for and explore sovereignty, dignity, and freedom in an age immersed in science and technology controversies by bridging the divides between art, science, engineering, and humanities. (shrink)

Agonistic recognition in education has three interlinked modes of aesthetic experience and self-presentation where one is related to actions in the public realm; one is related to plurality in the way in which it comes into existence in confrontation with others; and one is related to the subject-self, disclosed by ‘thinking. Arendt’s conception of ‘thinking’ is a way of getting to grips with aesthetic self-presentation in education. By action, i.e., by disclosing oneself and by taking initiatives, students and teachers constitute (...) their being. The way Arendt theorizes action (vita activa) makes it essentially unpredictable and destabilizing, which does not seem to fit into what should be expected from education. In the article I will argue that it should have a place by virtue of the debate, challenge and contest it offers. But education should also be defined from a specific kind of contemplation called ‘thinking’ to become the cultivation of a faculty of judgment in education—thinking (vita contemplativa) as a common virtue in education. Arendt’s demarcation between truth and meaning does from the point of view of agonistic recognition in education call for ‘thinking’ as a qualification of political and moral meaning–the ‘taste’ to be established in the individual, by individual judgements but always judged in relation to members of a community. (shrink)

Dieser Aufsatz befasst sich hauptsächlich mit drei Werken: The Human Condition der Philosophin Hannah Arendt, The Road To Serfdom des Ökonomen Friedrich A. Hayek und dem Essay “Tradition without Convention” aus dem Sammelband Freedom and the Arts des Musikwissenschaftlers Charles Rosen. Die Grundlage des vorliegenden Essays bildet The Human Condition, Die conditio humana bildet die Grundlage des Essays, in dem Arendts historisch angelegte Erzählung den öffentlichen und privaten Bereich, wie er in der griechischen Antike existierte und definiert wurde, bis zu (...) seinen verschiedenen Verzerrungen in der Moderne nachzeichnet. Die Veränderung wird in erster Linie als Ergebnis der schwankenden Verhältnisse der Conditio humana selbst verstanden, die Arendt ausführlich als Arbeit (animal laborans), Herstellen (homo faber) und Handeln (vita activa) kategorisiert. In diesem Zusammenhang untersuchen wir zwei Hauptgedanken: die Anreize zur Entscheidungsfindung und die Zuständigkeitsbereiche;und moderne Gebiete für Exzellenz, Betrachtung und Gleichberechtigung, die in der heutigen Zeit gedeihen können. Es geht um eine zweiteilige Diskussion: der Entscheidungsfähigkeit in einem erodierten privaten Bereich und den Preis für den höchsten Aspekt der menschlichen Existenz, wenn die Verheißung des öffentlichen Bereichs und seine Zugangsvoraussetzungen nicht mehr im Rahmen der egalitären Standards der Moderne gewährt werden. F. A. Hayeks überzeugende Auseinandersetzung mit Zentralplanung, die Unmöglichkeit ihrer Kompetenz sowie der moralische Verfall, der eintritt, wenn Entscheidungen und Verantwortlichkeiten ausgelagert werden, bieten einen nützlichen und konstruktiven Rahmen für die Beobachtung von sowie dem Schutz vor den Fallen eines eingenommenen privaten Bereichs. Rosen liefert mit seiner verblüffenden Analyse von Konventionen in der klassischen Musik des frühen 18. Jahrhunderts ein aufschlussreiches Paradigma, um damit nicht nur einen modernen öffentlichen Raum zu verorten, sondern auch Konventionen, Muster und Praktiken zu erkennen, die zu seiner Existenz und Langlebigkeit beitragen. (shrink)

This article seeks to question the relationship between “Political”, “Life” and “Action”, returning to the reading of Hannah Arendt’s concept of “ vita active ” in The Human Condition. Particularly, going back to the subject of “action” as a condition of possibility of “political life”. To do this, this analysis will focus on the thought of Philo, especially in a strange text in his corpus: The contemplative life or supplicants. The aim of the paper is to reflect on the (...) place where philosophical reflection and theological reflection as a political forms are installed and what implications does this has: what happens when the foundation of teaching does not pass through the “ vita activa ” but by a passive life under consecration to the task of reflection and study: can we raise from there a communal manner that constitutes politics as in-action? (shrink)

Perhaps the most often criticized element of Hannah Arendt's political theory is her insistence on the necessity of constructing and maintaining rigid boundaries between various activities of the human condition. Less often, however, is the attempt undertaken to determine the philosophical motivation stimulating this project of distinction. This article will attempt to demonstrate the extent to which Arendt's imperative is rooted in a certain misreading of the Marxian dialectic. The first part of the article will outline the contours of Arendt's (...) erroneous interpretation of Marx's understanding of labour, demonstrating the degree to which the latter breaks down the tripartite structure of the vita activa. The second part of the article will read Arendt's affirmation of distinction as being a response to what Arendt will take to be the problems of the dialectic, specifically the dialectic's allegedly necessary positing of conceptual contingency and logical necessity. Finally, the third part of the article will demonstrate, through an examination of two key passages in the work of Marx, the extent to which Marx himself was just as concerned with overcoming the type of homogeneous and abstract universalism rejected by Arendt. The ground will thus be provided for the overcoming of the necessity of Arendtian distinction, and perhaps also for a more fruitful engagement between the Marxian and Arendtian theoretical problematics. (shrink)

Arendt's book is an analysis of the vita activa, which comprises the three human activities of labor, work, and action. Her presentation involves a critique of modern and current conceptions of them and of many other social phenomena, and an emphasis on distinctions customarily neglected. The interpretation of her book, disregarding the many factual statements it contains, proceeds in a theoretical vein, analyzing her major conceptions, and then turns practical, asking what we as social scientists who listen to (...) her must do (focusing on ?behavior? and ?action?, ?values?, the means?end scheme, and man's historicity and dualism). The paper concludes with a brief explication of areas of research seen to emerge out of Arendt's work. (shrink)

I focus on the monastery life in Europe and its predomination of vita contemplativa upon vita activa. It is not hard to distinguish within Christianity its Manichaean component whose characteristic feature is a grudge against matter, body and sexuality. This complexity of ideas brought about the contempt of vital elements of human existence, so that its animal past, still present in Zivilisationsprozess. An alternative anthropology inspired by an evolutionism should based on the presumption that only through the (...) appreciation of an animal dimension of us—instead of monastic desire of becoming an angel—will it be possible to create new perspectives for renegotiation of the human–animal boundaries. (shrink)

Die Theorie menschlicher Tätigkeiten, die Arendt in Vita activa entwickelt, fällt hinter dem Anspruch, eine Anthropologie vorzulegen, zurück, weil das Verhältnis von Aktionen und Passionen ungeklärt bleibt. Dieses Defizit lässt sich teilweise beheben, indem man auf die Überlegungen zu den Passionen und zur Liebe zurückgeht, die sich unter anderem in ihrem Denktagebuch finden. Diese Ausweitung der Perspektive profitiert von einem Vergleich mit Adornos Theorie des Subjekts und eines antidualistischen Konzepts des „Impulses”.

This article expands Patchen Markell’s seminal problematization of The Human Condition by examining the impact that the modern developments in science and technology had on Arendt’s signature categories. Whereas Markell is interested in the systematic “architecture” of the book, I attempt to historicize Arendt’s distinctions in light of the story she tells about science and technology. From the invention of the telescope to the splitting of the atom, technoscience has provoked shifts in the hierarchies within the vita activa; (...) spawned new varieties of “labor,” “work,” and “action”; and blurred the traditional boundaries between “nature” and the “human world.” These reconfigurations draw the contours of a new, “modern world” that is different from the world whose story and conceptual tradition Arendt set out to articulate. Largely as a result of the activities of science and technology, the experiences that informed the categories of the “Western tradition” correspond to a world that is no longer our own. (shrink)

In the Renaissance there was a kind of linguistic-pictorial osmosis, in which mythological configurations derived from antique literature, the poetic metaphoric of Neoplatonism, semi-fantastic and semi-realistic visions and a visible penchant for decorative rhetoric intertwined with elements of rational thought, the cult of nature, traditional reference to higher authority and practical as well as theoretical acceptance of pictorial symbolic. This language was employed to explore philosophical, ethical, and even natural categories related to issues like the beginnings of the world and (...) nature, death, transience, vanity, temperance, virtue, harmony, vita activa and contemplativa—categories in which the people of the era strove to describe youth, maturity, old age and death. In this specific language writing about a truth, idea or moral principle primarily involved presenting it as a picture, a concrete, sensually embraceable form, thing or person. Thus, if it was necessary, logos followed imago, which was genetically precedent and most important in the cognitive sense. (shrink)

Philosophische Analysen zum Verhaltnis von Macht und Gewalt Die Philosophin Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) hat die politische Theorie des 20. Jahrhunderts durch eine folgenreiche begriffliche Unterscheidung nachhaltig herausgefordert. Sie entwickelt in ihren Schriften Vita activa, Uber die Revolution und Macht und Gewalt in den 1950er und 1960er Jahren die These, dass Macht und Gewalt zwei politische Phanomene darstellen, die gegenteilige Ursachen und Effekte haben und darum radikal zu unterscheiden sind. Arendt unterzieht die politische Geschichte der Gegenwart im Lichte des (...) Gegensatzes von Macht und Gewalt einer Relekture und entwickelt ein neues Verstandnis von Revolution und Demokratie, von okonomischer Rationalitat und totaler Herrschaft. Den Ausgangspunkt ihrer politischen Philosophie bildet die Uberzeugung, dass sich der freiheitliche Charakter der Politik daran bemisst, wie weit sie Gewalt in ihren verschiedenen Facetten vermeiden und transformieren kann. Das vorliegende Werk analysiert Arendts politische Philosophie, indem sie die deskriptive und normative Unterscheidung von Macht und Gewalt ins Zentrum ruckt. Der Gegensatz der beiden Konzepte bietet einen Schlussel, um wichtige Aspekte von Arendts politischem Denken zu klaren, die bei Arendt selbst wie auch in der Sekundarliteratur nur ansatzweise ausgefuhrt sind. Dies beinhaltet einerseits die genauere Bestimmung des Konzepts der Macht, verstanden als Ermoglichungsmacht und als Durchsetzungsmacht sowie deren Abgrenzung zu Formen der politischen Gewalt. Andererseits geht es darum, Arendts emphatisches Verstandnis von Macht als Praxis des Anfangens, Teilens und der Teilhabe kritisch nach seinen Grenzen und Ausschlussen zu befragen und zu zeigen, wo sich in Arendts eigener Machttheorie Gewalt implizit einschreibt und wie auf politischer Ebene Macht und Gewalt zusammenwirken konnen. Das Buch bietet eine klare und detaillierte Rekonstruktion von Arendts Verstandnis von Macht und Gewalt und diskutiert dessen aktuelle Bedeutung fur eine politische Theorie demokratischer Praxis. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ethics & the Environment 8.1 (2003) 93-101 [Access article in PDF] A Political LifeArendtian Aesthetics and Open Systems Sue Spaid Since the 1990s, artists have broken ground by producing works that are "open systems." That is, they are incomplete, participatory, and elastic. In this paper, I will argue that open systems exemplify Hannah Arendt's conception of vita activa, in contrast to art's traditional role as inspiring (...) class='Hi'>vita contemplativa. Since they do not explicitly affirm or refute political policies, such works are generally not considered "political" art. However, they accommodate Arendt's notion of the political life, since they incorporate process, durability, pluralities of spectators, and unpredictability. Furthermore, because they do not resemble what ordinarily passes for art, reflective judgment is required to engage them, and to determine whether they are art.Echoing Diotima's interest in immortality, Arendt links beauty to durability. Open systems are particularly durable because we remember them as a public experiences that include participants and spectators. Such performative and pleasurable worldly actions entail aesthetic engagements that are very much in line with Arendt's description of the political life. Critical Engagement In the sphere of fabrication itself, there is only one kind of object to which the unending chain of means and ends does not apply, and this [End Page 93] is the work of art, the most useless and, at the same time, the most durable thing human hands can produce... It is the reification that occurs in writing something down, painting an image, composing a piece of music, etc. which actually makes the thought a reality; and in order to produce these thought things, which we usually call art works, the same workmanship is required that through the primordial instrument of human hands builds the other, less durable and more useful things of the human artifice. (Arendt 2000, 177-78) In a 1964 interview with Gunter Gaus, Hannah Arendt described herself as a political theorist, who though trained as a philosopher had "said good-bye to philosophy once and for all." In identifying the tension between philosophy and politics, she differentiated man as a thinking being from man as an acting being, and she identified with the latter. She found that, because philosophers cannot be neutral or objective with regards to politics, they share a certain enmity toward politics, and she sought to avoid that response. Not surprisingly, she named Kant as an exception, because he understood this enmity to lie in the nature of the subject itself. In The Critique of Judgement, experience precedes reflective judgement, thus affirming a place for each subject's particular experiences. Kant, too, was a man of action.Kant's aesthetic judgment of taste, which is a normative but non-prescriptive process, makes room for Arendt's notions of worldliness and unpredictability. Critics have decried Arendt's political theory for its anti-rationalism, political existentialism and "aestheticization of politics," yet much can be learned from her clear commitment to equality, and the way she trusted and perhaps even idealized humanity (Curtis 1999, 18). She wrote, "Only action and speech relate specifically to this fact that to live always means to live among men, among those who are my equals. Hence, when I insert myself into the world, it is a world where others are already present" (Arendt 2000, 179). Given her interest in freedom, active engagement, critical thinking, and anti-instrumentalism, it is perhaps not surprising that Arendt found inspiration in Kant's conception of aesthetic judgment as requiring only communicative sociability, the object's purposeless purposiveness, and the spectator's free play of imagination and understanding.I am interested here in Arendt's aesthetics of the political life in relation to recent art that unwittingly fosters an engaged and open conception of the political. The works in question are not necessarily conscious of their political capacity. Rather, their presence assumes that spectators are [End Page 94] equals, and facilitates an active life, what Arendt described as the vita activa, as opposed to the vita contemplativa, the contemplative life. An active life, which requires a public space, entails active... (shrink)

Este artículo pretende abrir una vía de investigación para explorar en qué sentido la metodología y algunas de las obras de Hannah Arendt pueden ser interpretadas como formas de historia cultural. Esta primera incursión se realizará, en especial, a partir del estudio de tres escritos que coinciden en su época de publicación Rahel Varnhagen (1957), La condición humana (1958) y «Cultura y política» (1959) y que tratan desde diferentes aristas el tema de la relación entre la cultura y la política: (...) desde el vínculo entre la socialización de la cultura y la asimilación judía, desde la posición del arte en las actividades de la vita activa y desde la su teoría política y sus reflexiones sobre la crisis en la cultura. (shrink)

resumo: A crítica de Hannah Arendt a Karl Marx perpassa a questão da técnica. Arendt sugerira que Marx contribuíra para a elevação do animal laborans à condição humana moderna quando indicou que a emancipação humana estaria na vitória dos trabalhadores. Empreenderemos uma refutação à crítica de Arendt, indicando que Marx recusa a tradicional cisão entre vida ativa e vida contemplativa, para se opor à alienação do homem no labor, e não o contrário. Indicaremos, assim, que Marx estava mais próximo de (...) Arendt do que ela imaginava, dado ter criticado justamente a redução do homem a uma atividade que acaba por dar a todas as demais atividades uma forma meramente utilitária. Para ambos é preciso evitar empreender uma inversão hierárquica do pensar sobre o agir. abstract: Hannah Arendt’s critique to Karl Marx permeates the question of technique. Arendt suggested that Marx had contributed to elevate the animal laborans to the modern human condition when he indicated that human emancipation would lie in the workers’ victory. This text affords a rebuttal to this criticism of Arendt, indicating that Marx refuses the traditional split between vita activa and vita contemplativa in order to oppose the alienation of man to labor. We will indicate that Marx was closer to Arendt than she imagined, since he rightly criticized the reduction of man to an activity that ends up giving to all other activities a purely utilitarian form. To both of them it is necessary to avoid undertaking a hierarchical reversal of thinking over acting. (shrink)