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A review by books_ergo_sum
The Human Condition by Hannah Arendt
informative
reflective
slow-paced
3.0
Hannah Arendt, reading us for filth.
Underneath all the philosophy blah blah in here, this was just Hannah Arendt spilling some piping hot tea đ
Because when you get to the end of this book and she says:
âthe modern ageâwhich began with such an unprecedented and promising outburst of human activityâmay end in the deadliest, most sterile passivity history has ever known.â
Sheâs not wrong. And she has the densest 300+ pages on the history of ideas from antiquity to the 20th century to prove it.
It was interesting to think how much she was going against the grain in 1958 to argue that our work culture and technological advances undermine human agency and political freedom (the first pages of Bowling Alone, for example, cite a few 1958 articles showing how optimistic people were about politics and civic engagement at the time) but nowadays we just read this like⌠đ đ yeahhh.
On the one hand, the method in here was cool. She looked at Western history, isolated a few different modes of human activity (like politics or labour) and explained how different historical periods prioritized some modes over others, surprisingly randomly. And how, at least according to most of human history, the mode of activity our culture is currently prioritizing (labour) is the worst one.
Very cool. Very well researched.
Butâalmost unreadable. Unfortunately for us, German philosophy had a âno thesis statementsâ trend for a while there. I think it was supposed to be about philosophical integrity? Like, let the details speak for themselves; donât make sensationalist arguments like those dirty stinky French philosophersâŚ
But honestly, it was just annoying. If I have to read your philosophy book twice in order to suss out its unstated arguments, letâs call a spade a spade and say its format sucks.
Underneath all the philosophy blah blah in here, this was just Hannah Arendt spilling some piping hot tea đ
Because when you get to the end of this book and she says:
âthe modern ageâwhich began with such an unprecedented and promising outburst of human activityâmay end in the deadliest, most sterile passivity history has ever known.â
Sheâs not wrong. And she has the densest 300+ pages on the history of ideas from antiquity to the 20th century to prove it.
It was interesting to think how much she was going against the grain in 1958 to argue that our work culture and technological advances undermine human agency and political freedom (the first pages of Bowling Alone, for example, cite a few 1958 articles showing how optimistic people were about politics and civic engagement at the time) but nowadays we just read this like⌠đ đ yeahhh.
On the one hand, the method in here was cool. She looked at Western history, isolated a few different modes of human activity (like politics or labour) and explained how different historical periods prioritized some modes over others, surprisingly randomly. And how, at least according to most of human history, the mode of activity our culture is currently prioritizing (labour) is the worst one.
Very cool. Very well researched.
Butâalmost unreadable. Unfortunately for us, German philosophy had a âno thesis statementsâ trend for a while there. I think it was supposed to be about philosophical integrity? Like, let the details speak for themselves; donât make sensationalist arguments like those dirty stinky French philosophersâŚ
But honestly, it was just annoying. If I have to read your philosophy book twice in order to suss out its unstated arguments, letâs call a spade a spade and say its format sucks.